Research & Scholarship

Advance human understanding through scholarship, research, and post-baccalaureate programs that seek to heal, unify, and enlighten

Goal III: Advance human understanding through scholarship, research, and post-baccalaureate programs that seek to heal, unify, and enlighten

Context

The dividing line between teaching and research is never a sharp one. Good teaching is a conversation with students that is always open to novel insights; and good researchers are always ready to learn from others, whether those others are colleagues or students. Students and faculty are both engaged in inquiry whose culminating experience is discovery, a learning where no one else has previously charted a course. Teaching and research, then, are together integral parts of the core mission of any great university—the pursuit of knowledge and understanding.

Notre Dame has achieved distinction in undergraduate education, but a commitment to research has always been part of its driving vision. Rev. John Zahm, C.S.C., believed that Notre Dame’s destiny was to be a great university like the prominent German universities of his time. Fr. Burns, who became president of Notre Dame in 1919, established college deans and department chairs and hired the best faculty he could find. He wrote to a friend about a Notre Dame faculty member who was dedicated to research, saying: “My ambition is to have this kind of work going on in every department.” Fr. Hesburgh accelerated the growth in scholarship by, among many things, establishing a great research library and increasing research funding by a factor of 20. When he began his presidency in 1987, Fr. Malloy said in his inaugural address: “We must enthusiastically embrace our potential as a research institution, and we must define those areas of scholarly pursuit where we at Notre Dame are especially qualified to make a lasting contribution.”

The University of Notre Dame is now poised to build on past progress and undertake transformative steps to become even more a distinguished research university whose faculty and students contribute to our understanding of ourselves and our world and whose discoveries enhance human well-being. We believe we can be excellent in all research we undertake and truly distinguished in select areas.

By pushing forward into the unknown, by harnessing discoveries for service to the world, we are determined to become a great Catholic research university, deepening our understanding of God and creation and serving humanity.