Academics // Notre Dame News // Notre Dame News

Mendoza College offers 10-day program to develop executives in Catholic organizations

2013-05-21T08:00:00-04:00

The University of Notre Dame Nonprofit Professional Development program, located at the Mendoza College of Business, is offering a 10-day leadership program for executives in Catholic organizations. Held July 8-18 in the Giovanini Commons in the College’s lower level, the Catholic Leadership Certificate Program offers a range of topics vital for organizational development within the context of furthering the Catholic mission.

“The leaders attending this program face some very unique challenges,” said Marc Hardy, director of Nonprofit Executive Programs. “As with any business, they’re responsible for creating a strategy of growth, often amidst limited resources and exponentially increasing demands for services. At the same time, they want to be effective not just in the business sense, but in serving the Church. We supply them with a toolkit of knowledge and skills that help them to meet this twofold challenge.”

Hardy noted that 2013 marks the fifth year the Catholic Leadership Certificate has been offered as part of the commitment of the Mendoza College and the Nonprofit Executive Program to advancing the work of Catholic organizations. The tuition of $495 for the 10-day session, which includes most meals, is steeply discounted to allow nonprofit executives to attend. Registration deadline is July 1 (Monday).

The program includes sessions in:

Employment law

Implementing mission in practical ways in everyday operations

Measuring effectiveness and impact

Budgeting and finance

Nonprofit board governance

The instructors include faculty members from the Mendoza College and others from the University, as well as nonprofit executives and consultants. Sister Melanie DiPietro, director of Seton Hall University Law School Center for Religiously Affiliated Corporations, will present a special session on canon and civil law.

Contact: Marc Hardy, 574-631-1087, mhardy@nd.edu

Graduating seniors honored for commitment to postgraduate service

2013-05-20T16:00:00-04:00

One hundred sixty-nine University of Notre Dame graduating seniors embarking on a year or more of service in this country and abroad were honored during the University’s annual Service Send-Off ceremony on May 18 (Saturday) in the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center’s Leighton Concert Hall.

Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., president of the University of Notre Dame, commended the seniors for their commitment to service. Nearly a quarter of the graduates will join the Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) or programs that share its model to serve as educators in the nation’s Catholic schools. Others will serve in the Peace Corps and Teach for America. Still others will mentor AIDS orphans in South Africa, cultivate sustainable agriculture in the South Pacific islands, foster spiritual formation in the nation’s parishes, or provide a host of other services that match the mission of Notre Dame.

Elizabeth Moriarty, Class of 2000 and 2007, whose postgraduate experiences included work in an addiction recovery program, in the Catholic Worker program offering hospitality to homeless families, and as a jail chaplain, offered the gathered students: “You and I are called to go out from here … to practice the works of mercy. This is not service. This is sharing life. What I mean is that these are not to be reduced to things we do for a year or two and then get back on track with the real plan. These are the first steps of the rest of your life. This is a path for meeting and loving Jesus. These choices will define who you are now and who you will become as teachers, mothers, fathers, priests, nuns, business people, community organizers, artists or doctors. It is not a retreat or a chance to take a step back for a year off from the real world. It’s a year on."

Graduating senior Gabriela Hernandez, who is undecided on her postgraduate service experience, introduced Father Jenkins. Graduating senior Carl David Jones II, who will serve with ACE in Jacksonville, Fla., introduced Moriarty, and graduating senior Abigail McCrary, who will serve with the Dominican Volunteer Corps in New York, introduced Rev. Paul V. Kollman, C.S.C., executive director of the Center for Social Concerns (CSC).

In introducing Father Kollman, McCrary spoke of how blessed she has been as a student at the CSC and at the University. “Father John Dunne, a Notre Dame professor of theology, writes, ‘The crossing over and coming back are the greatest spiritual adventures of our time.’ Service allows individuals the opportunity to engage with others in a new context and gain insight and perspective. I have been immensely blessed in my four years at Notre Dame to have the opportunity to cross over multiple times — from South Bend elementary schools to Westville Prison to India to Uganda — and these experiences have come to define me and my time at this university.”

Father Kollman, in addressing the graduates, said, “You are embarking on something that shows your openness to learn and grow, give and receive. You enter a new university, which L’Arche founder Jean Vanier calls ‘the university of the poor.’ You embrace an internship of sorts, an internship in vulnerability. And you will continue to grow, of that we can be sure. Whether you head to Tanzania or Toronto, into a classroom or a boardroom, whether you teach or learn or pray or listen or fold laundry, or all of these things, you will grow. Lonely or rich in companions, you will grow. Happy or sad, sick or well, you will grow.”

Among the service programs in which this year’s Notre Dame graduates will participate are ACE, which provides teachers for understaffed parochial schools in dioceses across the United States; Notre Dame’s Echo Faith Formation Leadership Program, which trains and provides religious educators for Catholic parishes; the Peace Corps; AmeriCorps; Nuestro Pequenos Hermanos, which cares for orphaned and abandoned children in Latin America and the Caribbean; Jesuit Volunteer Corps; and Teach For America.

Many of the graduates became involved in service and social action through the programs and courses of the Center for Social Concerns. They join a community of more than 4,000 Notre Dame alumni who have chosen postgraduate volunteer service since the Center was founded in 1983.

Contact: Mike Hebbeler, director, senior transitions programs, Center for Social Concerns, 574-631-5779, Hebbeler.2@nd.edu

Commencement 2013: A Look Back

2013-05-19T16:00:00-04:00

A chance Mother’s Day encounter with a Jewish alumnus of Notre Dame provided Cardinal Timothy Dolan, principal speaker at the 168th University Commencement Ceremony, with the inspiration for his address: The proud graduate revealed to Cardinal Dolan the “secret” that makes Notre Dame great. (Watch Video / Read Address)

“‘It’s not the library, as first-rate as it is. It’s not the professors and the courses, as stellar as they are. It’s not the campus, as enchanting as it is, or even the football team, as legendary as it is, or even the magnificent service projects,’” Cardinal Dolan told the graduates. “‘No, the secret of Notre Dame is really a person, who we Jews call Miriam and you Christians call Mary. She’s there. She looks down from that Golden Dome, and if you really want to discover the secret of Notre Dame,’ my friend went on, ‘visit that Grotto that you Catholics call Lourdes. There’s something there. No, he concluded, there’s someone there. We call her Notre Dame and she’s the secret of this university.’”

Cardinal Dolan is archbishop of New York and president of the U.S. Conference of Bishops. He received an honorary doctor of laws degree at the ceremony, at which 2,078 undergraduates received their diplomas on Sunday (May 19) in Notre Dame Stadium.

“You, the class of 2013, have sensed Mary’s maternal presence, ‘rising, sizing and sympathizing’ these blessed years on a campus wrapped in her mantle, and as you praise God that Father Sorin and that pioneer band of priests and brothers of the Congregation of the Holy Cross placed this most noble endeavor under her patronage from day one 171 years ago. So may I propose to you, my new classmates, that she’s not just our patroness; she’s our model.”

Dolan urged graduates to consider their experiences in a fuller light: “Here our goal is not just a career, but a call; not just a degree, but discipleship; not just what we’ve gotten, but what we’re giving; not just the now, but eternity; not just the ‘I,’ but the ‘we’; not just the grades, but the gospel."

Mallory Meter, a psychology major from Beverly Hills, Mich., delivered the valedictory address. (Watch Video / Read Address) Stressing the importance of living “every single day fully aware, present, and conscious and to never stop searching for the beauty in the present moment,” Meter said she recognized that “…this ability is one that few people ever achieve and if they do, it is often too late. This lack of awareness is why the phrase ‘you don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone’ seems to be a truism of the human condition. It is why 30 years ago will always be the good old days, and it is why that intangible pin-prick we call nostalgia is so often accompanied by a sense of sadness. But what if we could learn at our young age to live with a constant awareness of the beauty in the world and in our lives? What if we could realize that these days are the good old days, and what if we could appreciate what we have while it’s still in our grasp?

“This place taught us to think critically, to reason, to evaluate, to debate, to question, and to create, and these are the tools it takes to avoid living unconsciously, prodded along by nothing but outside pressures and expectations. The things we have learned here can force us to see the beauty in the mundane and to appreciate and value the present. If we can use these tools Notre Dame has given us, I truly believe we can make the world a better place.”

Sister Susanne Gallagher, S.P.; Sister Mary Therese Harrington, S.H.; and Rev. James H. McCarthy, founders of the Special Religious Education Development Network (SPRED), received Notre Dame’s 2013 Laetare Medal, the oldest and most prestigious honor given to American Catholics.

“May you be surprised by joy as you undertake your life’s work,” Father McCarthy told the graduates. (Watch Video / Read Address) “May you go beyond your comfort zone to help those in need. May you be blessed with faithful companions for your journey. May those in need become your friends. As we say with them, you see, whenever we are happy together, Jesus is with us.”

2013 Laetare Medalists and Notre Dame President Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C.

SPRED’s ministry began in 1960, when Father McCarthy, a priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago, began working with parents, special educators and catechist volunteers of several archdiocesan parishes to make Catholic liturgies and catechesis more accessible to children and adult parishioners with developmental disabilities. Sister Harrington, a member of the Society of Helpers, joined him in 1963 to help with catechetical and administrative work, and Sister Gallagher, a member of the Sisters of Providence, joined them in 1967, assisting both with administration and the training of new special catechists.

Energized by the renewed emphasis on catechesis in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, SPRED’s ministry expanded beyond Chicago in the 1960s and now the 52-year-old network administers faith formation and sacramental initiation programs for people with special needs in 28 Catholic dioceses and 200 parishes nationwide (including in Notre Dame’s own diocese of Fort Wayne/South Bend) as well as small faith groups in several other countries including England, Ireland, Scotland, Australia, South Africa, Malta and Mexico.

Graduates urged to exhibit intellectual curiosity and 'grit' at Graduate School Commencement

2013-05-18T18:00:00-04:00

The University of Notre Dame’s Graduate School recognized 438 master’s and 213 doctoral degree recipients and presented several awards during Commencement ceremonies Saturday (May 18) in the Compton Family Ice Arena.

Nathan O. Hatch, president of Wake Forest University and formerly provost and the Andrew V. Tackes Professor of History at Notre Dame, delivered the Commencement address.

Hatch focused on the themes of curiosity and grit in his remarks.

“This morning I want to leave you with two simple messages, the first about intellectual curiosity and the importance of learning as an end in itself; the second, about what scholars are now calling ‘grit’ or resilience,” he said.

Hatch explained that there were two reasons for his emphasis on intellectual curiosity.

“First, it is crucial for the vitality of your own sense of calling long-term,” he said. “Whether you will be spending time teaching, or in research, in public service, or in management, keeping alive a flame of curiosity will give motivation and meaning to what you do. Thomas Jefferson once said that the best prize life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing. Your work will continue to seem worth doing if it is animated by sustained inquiry.”

Hatch noted that he was also emphasizing intellectual curiosity because the ideal of learning for its own sake is under steady assault amid demands that the primary purpose of higher education should be its economic utility.

“This kind of accountability may have its place, but it also brings into question the value of learning itself and the vital importance of a liberal arts education — in a time when in Andrew Delbanco’s eloquent rendering, the liberal arts are becoming marginal or merely ornamental.

“All of us need to redouble our efforts to defend the ‘higher’ purposes of a college education despite our economic woes, just as C.S. Lewis did in his address during World War II, ‘Learning in Wartime:’ In that address he defended the importance of the life of the mind even when civilization was literally crumbling.”

Hatch explained that “grit” is important for two reasons. The first is related to the fact that today’s generation of students tends to have many and varied interests.

“My advice to you, as young professionals, is to become really good at something,” he said. “It is better to master one discrete thing than dabble in ten interesting projects. Being the faithful steward of a small responsibility will convince others you can be entrusted with larger things.”

Hatch noted that grit is important for another reason.

“Your generation needs to cultivate a second quality of ‘grit:’ to understand how to cope with disappointment and failure,” he said. “The timeless, if uncomfortable, truth is that true strength of character is almost always forged by encountering and overcoming failure.”

In conclusion, Hatch said, “This morning, I extend the heartiest congratulations on this special day. And I commend to you the conjoined virtues of relentless curiosity and sustained focus and hard work.”

The recipients of several Graduate School awards also were recognized during the Commencement ceremony.

The top graduating doctoral students in the humanities, social sciences, science and engineering were honored with the Eli J. and Helen Shaheen Graduate School Awards.

Bernard Sensale Rodríguez, an electrical engineering Ph.D., was the recipient for engineering. His research focus was on ultra-high frequency, or terahertz, electronics and their diverse applications. He will assume a tenure-track position this fall as an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Utah.

In the social sciences, Laura K. Taylor, a peace studies and psychology Ph.D., was the recipient. The primary focus of her research was on children’s psychological development in areas of war, and ethnic conflict and violence — specifically in Columbia, Northern Ireland and Croatia. In the fall, she will assume a tenure track position in the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro.

Major Gooyit, a chemistry Ph.D., was the recipient in the sciences. His research was focused on illuminating the progression mechanisms of a number of major human diseases — notably stroke, traumatic brain injury, brain tumors, and diabetic wounds — and the development of therapeutic strategies. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Scripps Research Institute, a leading biomedical research laboratory.

Theresa O’Byrne, a Medieval Studies Ph.D., was the recipient in the humanities. O’Byrne has made original discoveries about late medieval Anglo-Irish literature that have established her as a rising star in the medieval literary field. She will be joining the faculty at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.

The Distinguished Alumnus Award was presented to Richard D. Connell. Connell was graduated from Notre Dame in 1989 with a doctorate in organic chemistry. He was honored for his achievements in pharmaceutical research and development as well as his accomplishments as a leader at two of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies: Bayer and Pfizer.

Jennifer Tank, The Ludmilla F, Stephen J., and Robert T. Galla Collegiate Chair in Biological Sciences at Notre Dame, was honored as the 2013 recipient of the University’s Rev. James A. Burns. C.S.C., Graduate School Award. The award is given annually to a faculty member for distinction in teaching or other exemplary contributions to graduate education and honors the first Notre Dame president with an advanced degree.

Kathie Newman in the Department of Physics was recognized as this year’s Director of Graduate Studies Award winner and Nancy Davis from the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering was named recipient of this year’s Graduate Administrative Assistant Award.

Seven seniors receive national fellowships and scholarships

2013-05-17T15:00:00-04:00

The Fulbright Exchange Program, Churchill and Clarendon and other national organizations have awarded postgraduate scholarships and fellowships to seven members of the University of Notre Dame’s Class of 2013.

MurphyKate Montee, Sturgeon Bay, Wis., received a Churchill Scholarship, which encourages the exchange of knowledge and the sharing of ideas in science and technology between the U.S. and Great Britain. This program enables outstanding American students to do graduate work in engineering, mathematics and the physical and natural sciences at Churchill College, Cambridge University. She also was awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.

Catherine Reidy, Greenwood Village, Colo., received a Clarendon Scholarship. Oxford University recognizes the best students worldwide as decided by experts in each student’s field, awarding 100 scholarships each year divided equally among the four divisions of study at Oxford: humanities, medical sciences, math and science, and social science.

Three seniors received Fulbright Awards. They are Patrick Kramer, Akron, Ohio, to Singapore; Caitlin Myron, Oreland Park, Ill., to Ireland; and Monica O’Hearn, Chester, Md., to Morocco.

Joseph Wegener, Brockton, Mass., was awarded a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship to Malaysia.

Ian Duncan, Bedford, Ind., received a Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD) Study Scholarship, which is awarded to graduating seniors with a well-defined study or research project that makes studies at universities in Germany essential.

Kaitlin Veenstra, Saint Paul., Minn., was awarded a Gates Cambridge Scholarship, which assists students of exceptional academic achievement and scholarly promise for whom advanced study at the University of Cambridge would be particularly appropriate.

The University’s Center for Undergraduate Scholarly Engagement helps students find appropriate fellowships, navigate the application process, write robust proposals and personal statements, and prepare for interviews.

Notre Dame to open three new international programs

2013-05-15T14:30:00-04:00

The University of Notre Dame’s International Studies office has announced that it will offer three new opportunities for study abroad in South Korea, Spain and Switzerland in spring 2014.

Notre Dame and Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea, will begin a bilateral exchange program in the spring 2014 semester. Open to undergraduates in all majors, the program does not require knowledge of the Korean language, since its courses will be taught in English. Available courses will include Korean language, Korean studies, business and economics, politics, sociology, engineering, sciences and human ecology.

Notre Dame and the Polytechnic Institute of Valencia in Alcoy, Spain, will begin a bilateral exchange program in spring 2014. Designed for sophomore or junior engineering majors, particularly those in chemical, electrical and computer science engineering, the program will be offered to students who have completed at least two semesters of college-level Spanish or the equivalent.

Through Boston University’s Geneva-Physics program, Notre Dame students will have the opportunity to study at the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland. The program, which combines coursework in quantum physics and electrodynamics at UNIGE and directed research at CERN, is open to physics majors who have completed at least two semesters of college-level French or the equivalent. Additionally, students will be required to complete a specially designed French-language tutorial before going to Geneva.

Applications for all these new programs are available online.

Contact: Kathleen Opel, director of international studies, 574-631-9525, kopel@nd.edu

Notre Dame establishes Office of Postdoctoral Scholars

2013-05-14T15:00:00-04:00

To ensure that postdoctoral scholars in the early stages of their careers receive necessary resources, training, mentoring and comprehensive professional development support, the University of Notre Dame is forming an Office of Postdoctoral Scholars. The newly formed office will be administered through the Graduate School and is slated to open July 1.

Postdoctoral scholars are researchers who have received their Ph.D.s and who are undertaking additional training before assuming their professional careers, be it in the academy, industry, government or nonprofit setting. There currently are 271 postdoctoral scholars at Notre Dame.

Building on a foundation put in place by the Office of Research — which formerly managed the appointments of postdoctoral scholars — the new office will consolidate services and provide additional professional development training and resources that will allow postdocs to flourish both at Notre Dame and beyond in their careers.

“The fact that the Office of Postdoctoral Scholars will report through the Graduate School signals Notre Dame’s recognition that postdoctoral appointments are developmental positions for scholars preparing for the next stage in their careers,” said Christine Maziar, acting dean of the Graduate School.

Primary functions of the office will include:

Serving as a central location for providing services aimed at postdoctoral scholars’ needs.
Developing a postdoc professional development program in partnership with the Graduate School Professional Development program that is focused on research, teaching, career and professional ethics.
Building a strong and interactive postdoctoral community through orientation, information sessions, workshops and social events.
Providing assistance to faculty with recruiting and hiring postdocs.
Providing oversight of postdoctoral appointment procedures and policies.
Serving as a resource for visa issues involving postdocs.

Innovative-Thinkers Camp returns for second year

2013-05-08T15:00:00-04:00

Students build lamps from recycled materials during Innovative-Thinkers Camp 2012

The University of Notre Dame is partnering with several local organizations to host the second annual Innovative-Thinkers Camp, a two-week summer experience created to encourage youth in grades seven through nine to obtain skills that will create a mindset for individual achievement in their academic and future career interests. The camp also attempts to cultivate a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship in the Michiana region by nurturing the pipeline that feeds local economic development.

This summer, 100 Black Men of Greater South Bend, Indiana Black Expo, Ivy Tech Community College, La Casa de Amistad, Mount Carmel Baptist Missionary Church, The Salvation Army, the South Bend Community School Corp., and the YMCA Innovation Delta will partner with Notre Dame to host a second camp Mondays through Fridays from June 10 through June 21. Most days include a guest speaker from the business community sharing their areas of career expertise, and explaining the STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and math) applications in their work. In addition, camp staff and administrators attempt to link students with subject matter experts so that they can discover how to develop their passions and interests into a potential career path or business.

Last year, several Notre Dame departments collaborated with Intel, Lenovo, the Lincoln Division of Ford Motor Company, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc., La Casa de Amistad, 100 Black Men of Greater South Bend, and the Memorial Center Pfeil Innovative Center to pilot the Innovative-Thinker’s Camp. The 2012 summer parent and student evaluations were outstanding, with parents reporting immediate positive changes in their children.

To maximize the benefits of the program, it is recommended that students participate throughout their seventh-, eighth- and ninth-grade years, but three-year participation is not required.

During the first summer, students will:

Understand innovation as a key competency for future success by developing an idea for a business presentation
Learn communication skills to better communicate with adults, peers and others
Understand the use of social media as a tool for personal branding
Expand their knowledge of information-seeking behavior, learning to recognize plagiarism and intellectual property (copyright) in the context of information literacy
Transition into supplemental programs for academic support

To provide continuity between each summer camp, the program also includes quarterly field trips that include experiential STEAM activities, academic support opportunities with Notre Dame’s TRiO Programs and educational opportunities for parents.

The camp day is scheduled from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday. Breakfast, lunch and an afternoon snack are provided each day during the camp. Camp sites for the 2013 session include Ivy Tech Community College, Navarre Intermediate Center, the Ray and Joan Kroc Corps Community Center, the Robinson Community Learning Center (RCLC) and the Notre Dame Center for Arts and Culture.

Applications may be obtained from the Center for Arts and Culture, the RCLC, the Kroc Center or La Casa de Amistad. Application deadline is May 17 (Friday).

Contact: Jackie Rucker, associate director, community relations, 574-631-3249; Iris Outlaw, director, Multicultural Student Programs and Services, 574-631-6841

More than 3,000 students to receive degrees May 18-19

2013-05-07T15:40:00-04:00

More than 3,000 students will receive degrees during the University of Notre Dame’s Commencement ceremonies, which will be held on campus May 18 and 19 (Saturday and Sunday).

Degrees will be conferred on 2,078 undergraduates at Notre Dame’s 168th University Commencement Ceremony on Sunday. Cardinal Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York and president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, will be the principal speaker and the recipient of an honorary degree. Sister Susanne Gallagher, S.P.; Sister Mary Therese Harrington, S.H.; and Rev. James H. McCarthy, founders of the Special Religious Education Development Network, will receive the University of Notre Dame’s 2013 Laetare Medal, the oldest and most prestigious honor given to American Catholics.

Mallory Meter, a psychology major from Beverly Hills, Mich., will deliver the valedictory address.

In addition to Cardinal Dolan, other honorary degree recipients are: Gu Binglin, former president of Tshingua University in Beijing; Sister Antona Ebo, F.S.M., a lifelong pioneer in civil rights; Marilynne Robinson, an award-winning author of fiction and nonfiction; Morton Schapiro, the 16th president of Northwestern University; and Kenneth Stinson, chairman emeritus of Peter Kiewit Sons’ Inc. and a member of the Notre Dame Board of Trustees.

On Saturday, an additional 396 students will receive master’s and doctoral degrees at the Graduate School Commencement Ceremony, along with 422 master’s degree students at the Mendoza College of Business Ceremony and 197 students at the Law School Ceremony.

Notable Commencement weekend events are:

ROTC Commissioning Ceremony, 9 a.m. Saturday, Leighton Concert Hall, DeBartolo Performing Arts Center

Graduate School Commencement Ceremony, 10 a.m. Saturday, Compton Family Ice Arena

Mendoza College of Business Graduate Ceremony, 10 a.m. Saturday, Purcell Pavilion, Joyce Center

Law School Ceremony, 12:30 p.m. Saturday, Hesburgh Library Reflecting Pool

Service Send-Off Ceremony, 1 p.m. Saturday, Leighton Concert Hall, DeBartolo Performing Arts Center

Commencement Mass, 5 p.m. Saturday, Purcell Pavilion, Joyce Center

University Commencement Ceremony, 9 a.m. Sunday, Notre Dame Stadium

Undergraduate college and departmental diploma ceremonies, beginning at 1 p.m. Sunday, various locations

A complete schedule of events is available on the Commencement website.

A number of the weekend’s events will be streamed live on the Internet.

Traumatized moms avoid tough talks with kids, study shows

2013-05-03T16:00:00-04:00

Mothers who have experienced childhood abuse, neglect or other traumatic experiences show an unwillingness to talk with their children about the child’s emotional experiences, a new study from the University of Notre Dame shows.

According to the study, which was presented at the Society for Research in Child Development 2013 Biennial Meeting in Seattle, a sample of low-income mothers who had experienced their own childhood traumas exhibited ongoing “traumatic avoidance symptoms,” which is characterized by an unwillingness to address thoughts, emotions, sensations or memories of those traumas. This avoidance interfered with mothers’ ability to talk with their children about the child’s emotions, leading to shorter, less in-depth conversations; those mothers also used closed-end questions that did not encourage child participation.

“Traumatic avoidance symptoms have been shown to have a negative impact on the cognitive and emotional development of children,” said Kristin Valentino, Notre Dame assistant professor of psychology who specializes in the development of at-risk and maltreated children. Valentino conducted the research with Notre Dame undergraduate Taylor Thomas.

Kristin Valentino

“This research is important because it identifies a mechanism through which we can understand how maternal trauma history relates to her ability to effectively interact with her child. This finding also has implications for intervention work, since avoidance that is used as a coping mechanism is likely to further impair psychological functioning,” Valentino said.

In a related study published recently in the journal Child Abuse and Neglect, Valentino found that maltreating parents, many of whom had experienced childhood trauma, could successfully be taught to use more elaborative and emotion-rich reminiscing with their preschool-aged children, which has been linked to a children’s subsequent cognitive abilities in a number of areas including memory, language and literacy development.

Contact: Kristin Valentino, 574-631-1641, Kristin.Valentino@nd.edu

Mallory Meter named 2013 valedictorian

2013-05-01T17:55:00-04:00

Mallory Meter

Mallory Meter, a psychology major from Beverly Hills, Mich., has been named valedictorian of the 2013 University of Notre Dame graduating class and will present the valedictory address during the University Commencement Ceremony on May 19 (Sunday) at Notre Dame Stadium.

Meter, who has achieved continuous Dean’s List honors each semester, currently has earned a 4.0 cumulative grade point average.

A member of Phi Beta Kappa, the nation’s oldest academic honor society, Meter has worked as a research assistant for Notre Dame’s Center for Advanced Measurement of Personality and Psychopathology, under the direction of David Watson, Andrew J. McKenna Family Professor of Psychology. She also evaluated the cognitive development of preschoolers at Notre Dame’s “Ready for Kindergarten!” lab.

Meter conducted research at the Undergraduate Research Internship Program at Northwestern University’s Family Institute, and served as a student volunteer for Project Recovery Intensive Services for Mothers at Oaklawn Family Services in Pontiac, Mich.

While at Notre Dame, she served as a Lyons Hall Lector and as a volunteer at the Ronald McDonald House in South Bend.

Shawn Steurer

This fall, Meter plans to pursue a master’s degree in social work with a mental health concentration at the University of Chicago, where she was awarded an academic scholarship.

The Commencement invocation will be offered by Shawn Steurer, an electrical engineering major from Batavia, Ill., who currently has a 3.982 grade point average.

Faculty awards honor exemplary work in undergraduate teaching and advising

2013-05-01T13:00:00-04:00

Eighteen University of Notre Dame faculty members have received Rev. Edmund P. Joyce, C.S.C., Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching and three faculty have been honored with Dockweiler Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate Advising.

The awards are presented by the Office of the Provost, but recipients are selected through a process that includes peer and student nominations.

The Dockweiler Award winners are:

Elly Brenner, associate professional specialist in the First Year of Studies

Kathleen Cannon, O.P., professional specialist in the College of Science

Ann Marie R. Power, associate professional specialist in sociology

The 18 winners of Joyce teaching excellence awards represent faculty who have had a profound influence on undergraduate students through sustained exemplary teaching. Faculty committees in each of seven disciplinary areas review the peer and student nominations.

The recipients are:

Patricia L. Clark, chemistry and biochemistry

Shane A. Corwin, finance

Alan R. DeFrees, architecture

Malgorzata Dobrowolska-Furdyna, physics

James L. Fuehrmeyer, accountancy

J. Daniel Gezelter, chemistry and biochemistry

James F. Johnson, chemistry and biochemistry

Mary M. Keys, political science

Yahya C. Kurama, civil and environmental engineering and earth sciences

Brian R. Levey, accountancy

Cynthia K. Mahmood, anthropology

Tadeusz R. Mazurek, classics

Elizabeth S. Moore, marketing

Mark W. Roche, German and Russian languages and literatures

Ryan K. Roeder, aerospace and mechanical engineering

Sebastian Rosato, political science

Robert E. Sullivan, history

Paul J. Weithman, philosophy

The undergraduate teaching award is supported by a gift from the late Father Joyce’s classmates in the Class of 1937. This is the seventh year that advisers and student mentors are being honored through an award supported by the Julia Stearns Dockweiler Charitable Foundation.

The search is over: Internet content is looking for you

2013-05-01T06:00:00-04:00

Where you are and what you’re doing increasingly play key roles in how you search the Internet. In fact, your search may just conduct itself.

This concept, called “contextual search,” is improving so gradually the changes often go unnoticed, and we may soon forget what the world was like without it, according to Brian Proffitt, a technology expert and adjunct instructor of management in the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business.

Contextual search describes the capability for search engines to recognize a multitude of factors beyond just the search text for which a user is seeking. These additional criteria form the “context” in which the search is run. Recently, contextual search has been getting a lot of attention due to interest from Google.

Utilizing contextual search, Google Now provides information based on location, and by accessing calendar entries and travel confirmation messages in Gmail accounts. Available on Android for the last six months, Google Now was just released for the iPhone/iPad platform.

“You no longer have to search for content, content can search for you, which flips the world of search completely on its head,” says Proffitt, who is the author of 24 books on mobile technology and personal computing and serves as an editor and daily contributor for ReadWrite.com, one of the most widely read and respected tech blogs in the world.

“Basically, search engines examine your request and try to figure out what it is you really want,” Proffitt says. “The better the guess, the better the perceived value of the search engine. In the days before computing was made completely mobile by smartphones, tablets and netbooks, searches were only aided by previous searches.

“Today, mobile computing is adding a new element to contextual searches,” he says. “By knowing where and when a search is being made, contextual search engines can infer much more about what you want and deliver more robust answers. For example, a search for nearby restaurants at breakfast time in Chicago will give you much different answers than the exact same search in Tokyo at midnight.”

Context can include more than location and time. Search engines will also account for other users’ searches made in the same place and even the known interests of the user.

“Someday soon,” Proffitt says, “you’ll watch a trailer of the latest romantic movie, and the next time you search for movie times at the local theater, that movie will be prominently displayed.”

Also on the horizon, contextual searches may be teamed up with the Internet of Things, a euphemism used to describe an inter-connected network of devices large and small, reporting data on what’s going on around them.

“Imagine a part in your car sending a malfunction signal that schedules your car for a repair appointment,” Proffitt says, “followed up by an automated function that checks your calendar online and schedules the appointment for you. Or, consider a hydro-sensor in your garden that sends you a message to let you know the plants need more water.”

This is just the tip of what the Internet of Things will do, according to Proffitt.

“Coupled with contextual searching, it could transform our online experience to something where, instead of us searching for knowledge, objects and machines around us will be delivering information to us or taking direct action,” he says. “Clothes could grow more opaque if the UV rating is too high on a given day. Pricing information for a new TV in the electronics store might display right on your phone. Nutrition information for cupcakes in your favorite bakery…”

“It will all be there at your fingertips.”

Contact: Brian Proffitt, 574-383-9257, bproffit@nd.edu

Notre Dame to offer courses through online education consortium

2013-05-01T00:00:00-04:00

The University of Notre Dame is among seven leading academic institutions that will participate beginning this fall in Semester Online, the first education consortium to offer online, for-credit courses from top colleges and universities.

Notre Dame joins Boston College, Brandeis University, Emory University, Northwestern University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Washington University in St. Louis in the consortium, in partnership with 2U, an industry leader in creating online academic experiences for top universities.

“Semester Online provides a new educational experience of the highest quality, as rigorous as traditional on-campus instruction,” said Thomas G. Burish, Notre Dame’s provost. “The consortium offers innovative undergraduate courses from world-class research universities along with small discussion groups, personal engagement with leading professors, and full credit towards one’s degree. Notre Dame is pleased to join 2U and the outstanding consortium schools in this exciting venture."

Through Semester Online, academically qualified college students will have access to an online learning experience that features live class sessions with renowned professors, richly produced and self-paced course materials, and a strong social network that allows them to collaborate, engage in conversations and establish meaningful relationships.

Applications are now being accepted for enrollment in 11 fall courses, including two taught by Notre Dame faculty: “Shakespeare and Film” with Peter Holland, McMeel Family Professor in Shakespeare Studies and associate dean for the arts; and “The Rise of Christianity” with Candida Moss, professor of New Testament and early Christianity.

Information about all Semester Online courses and the application process is available online at semesteronline.org. The fall application deadline is May 24.

Contact: Julie Hail Flory, director of public relations, 574-631-7031, jflory@nd.edu

Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition to begin May 10

2013-04-26T16:40:00-04:00

The 40th annual Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition will be held May 10 to 12 (Friday to Sunday) in the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center at the University of Notre Dame.

This unique weekend features remarkable young musicians from around the world in three divisions: juniors, senior strings and senior winds. Ensembles may include brass quintets, string quartets, woodwind quintets, piano trios, saxophone quartets, string sextets, percussion ensembles, wind trios and an eclectic mix of winds and strings.

The quarter-final and semi-final rounds of the competition will be held May 10 and 11 and are free and open to the public. The final round competition, to be held May 12, also is free, but tickets are required for the grand prize concert. Tickets are available online at http://performingarts.nd.edu, or by visiting or calling the center’s ticket office at 574-631-2800.

Established in South Bend in 1973, the Fischoff Competition is the nation’s largest chamber music competition and attracts musicians from across the country and around the world.

More information and a complete schedule of events are available at http://fischoff.org.

Four Arts and Letters faculty receive ACLS Fellowships

2013-04-25T16:00:00-04:00

Four professors in the University of Notre Dame’s College of Arts and Letters have been awarded American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Fellowships for the 2013-14 academic year.

Katherine Brading, William J. and Dorothy K. O’Neill Professor of Philosophy and director of the History and Philosophy of Science (HPS) graduate program in the Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values, for “Theoretical Physics as a Contribution of Philosophy;”
Catherine Cangany in the Department of History for “An Empire of Fakes: Counterfeit Goods in Eighteenth-Century America;”
David Hernandez, assistant professor in the Department of Classics, for “Butrint Archaeological Research Project: The Roman Forum;” and
Xiaoshan Yang, associate professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, for “Wang Anshi and the Song Poetic Sensibility.”

Sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, among other institutions, ACLS Fellowships serve as salary replacement for professors who wish to conduct six to 12 continuous months of full-time research.

“The competition for these fellowships is fierce,” notes Ken Garcia, associate director for Notre Dame’s Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts. The ACLS received 1,121 fellowship applications nationwide and made only 65 awards—a success rate of only 5.8 percent.

“I am honored and thrilled to receive this tremendous help for my research,” says Hernández, who, in addition to the ACLS fellowship, has recently been awarded a Career Enhancement Fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation and a fellowship from Harvard’s Loeb Classical Library Foundation.

The ongoing scholarship of the College of Arts and Letters faculty has a strong record of attracting research funding from private foundations, corporations and the federal government. Over the past decade, the number of faculty who have received major national fellowships in the arts, humanities and social sciences places Notre Dame among the top six universities in the nation.

Originally published by Arts and Letters at al.nd.edu on April 23, 2013.

Washington Program packed with opportunity

2013-04-25T16:00:00-04:00

Students pose for a photo at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C.

For students participating in the University of Notre Dame’s Washington Program, the semester studying in our nation’s capital offers opportunities to combine coursework with internships in a range of areas, from Congress and advocacy groups to media and cultural institutions.

This semester, Notre Dame Washington Program students have visited the White House, the Capitol, the State Department, the Pentagon and the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), as part of their core seminar. Notre Dame’s President Emeritus, Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., served on the board of directors at USIP and a hall that houses the Institute’s Religion and Peacemaking Center was named after Father Hesburgh in 2010.

“Students have also met with Francis Rooney, former Ambassador to the Holy See, to discuss the papal conclave, and attended a briefing on human trafficking by Ambassador-at-Large Luis CdeBaca, who coordinates U.S. efforts to combat contemporary forms of slavery,” says Tom Kellenberg, executive director of the Washington Program.

“This semester, they also met privately with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., then toured the Supreme Court building. Chief Justice Roberts spent 30 minutes answering student questions regarding the history, traditions and constitutional role of the Supreme Court.”

Notre Dame engineering team receives NSF I-Corps Award for innovation training

2013-04-23T13:00:00-04:00

A team from the University of Notre Dame has been awarded a $50,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) Innovation Corps (I-Corps) award to perform a commercialization assessment of a diagnostic technology that resulted from prior NSF-funded research coming out of the Advanced Diagnostics and Therapeutics Initiative (AD&T). The I-Corps program was established in 2011 to help jump-start a national innovation ecosystem by providing entrepreneurial training to more effectively move technologies out of the lab and into the marketplace.

I-Corps teams are composed of a principal investigator who has a funding track record with the NSF; an entrepreneurial lead, which can be a student or junior researcher having significant experience in the technology as well as entrepreneurial aspirations; and a business mentor who has experience transitioning technologies to the market. The Notre Dame team included Hsueh-Chia Chang, Bayer Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, as principal investigator; Sunny Shah, senior scientist at AD&T, as entrepreneurial lead; and mentor Kerry Wilson, founder and president of Springboard Engineering Solutions.

The Notre Dame I-Corps project, titled “A Low-Cost, Rapid, Sensitive, PCR-Free Pathogen Diagnostic Platform,” was based upon a microfluidic-based nucleic acid detection system for rapid sensing of DNA and RNA from harmful pathogens.

“The platform technology has the capability for highly sensitive, selective and rapid detection of nucleic acids from bacteria, viruses and other living cells such as human or even plant tissue,” Chang said. “Products enabled by this technology can be low-cost, low-power, portable and will have great implications for clinical diagnostics, public health, global health, food safety, environmental monitoring and biodefense.”

“A typical challenge for platform technologies is in defining the product road map and identifying the first best market to target,” said Kirk Reinbold, managing director of AD&T. “By understanding the dynamics and needs of these markets, academic researchers can make better decisions on defining the next steps toward commercialization. Getting the resources to assist researchers in positioning the technology for a market ‘pull,’ where the market dictates what it needs, instead of a technology ‘push,’ where researchers often guess at where the technology will be best accepted, is notoriously lacking at most universities.”

The I-Corps program kicked off this past January at a meeting with 23 other teams in Washington, D.C. It was administered by four consultants with deep knowledge and success in starting technology ventures.

“This was an eye-opening experience,” said Shah. “We decided to explore food safety as our initial market, specifically the detection of bacteria in food processing plants, thinking this would be a perfect market with a low barrier for entry. I had worked with Kerry Wilson to develop a portable prototype, Rapisense, funded through Notre Dame’s Proof-of-Technology Development Center. We thought we were ready to rock and roll.”

The I-Corps program immerses the teams in a purposefully stressful startup-like environment, infusing them with the importance of customer discovery.

“It doesn’t matter what we, as researchers, think is the value of our technology; it’s what the customer thinks that is important,” Shah said. “We developed what is called a business model canvas where you hypothesize the value proposition (or the cure to the customer’s pain) that your technology addresses. To test the hypothesis, we were expected to conduct 100 interviews with potential customers in the food processing industry, preferably in person, and in six weeks.

“Talk about pressure! We learned quickly that the best way to get feedback was to not discuss the technology, but rather to listen to the customer and hear what their pain points were, what would be possible solutions and how this affects their bottom line.”

“In the business world, you pretty much have a grasp on where the needs are and that helps guide your product development,” Wilson said. “In academia, however, there is no marketing department. I-Corps truly forced the academics to think about the customer. It was customer focus on steroids.”

“After the first 50 or so interviews, from California to Minnesota to Maryland, we found out quickly that a rapid test in a food processing plant was not going to work since the current practice of sending samples to labs was not a problem,” Shah said. “Why rock the boat?”

The team did a pivot and looked at the actual labs themselves.

“With food labs, we gained additional insight in that with food you need to typically use culture enrichment methods to grow bacteria for a day or two, because that’s the only known method to find that one bacteria in a pound of ground beef,” Shah said. “This shot down our value proposition because rapid diagnostics was limited by culture time, and all we could compete on was price.”

The analysis was that food safety was not as attractive a market as the team believed. Its final decision was that this was a “no go” and that it should look at other markets, in a similar customer discovery-focused fashion. Such markets are clinical diagnostics, environmental testing and biodefense.

“The lessons learned from customer discovery have been truly phenomenal,” Shah said. “All researchers desiring to commercialize their discoveries should learn this.”

I-Corps is a public-private partnership that helps propel scientific and engineering discoveries into useful technologies, products and processes. Through I-Corps, academic researchers bring their technology concepts to an intensive, hypothesis-driven curriculum in which venture capitalists and entrepreneurs lead the scientists and engineers through the customer discovery process. The course is based on the Lean LaunchPad method developed and taught at Stanford University by Silicon Valley entrepreneur-turned-teacher Steve Blank. I-Corps participants learn by doing, as they “get out of the building” and speak to scores of potential customers in order to assess the market for their technology.

AD&T creates technologies and tools to combat disease, promote health and safeguard the environment. Its investigators focus on the common purpose of advancing micro- and nano-scale research to improve lives around the world. The application of AD&T innovations range from the home, to doctor’s offices to developing countries.

A fundamental characteristic of AD&T is the commitment to move discoveries out of the lab and into the field or market, where they can have real world impact. The initiative has established a record of success in generating new intellectual property in areas such as diagnostic biochips, cancer-fighting nanoparticles and paper-based diagnostic tools for the developing world.

Contact: Kirk Reinbold, managing director, AD&T, kreinbol@nd.edu

Senior Andrew Owens wins 2013 Baker Award

2013-04-23T10:00:00-04:00

For the third time in the past four years, a student enrolled in the John W. Gallivan Program in Journalism, Ethics and Democracy at the University of Notre Dame is the recipient of the Brook Baker Collegiate Journalist of the Year Award.

Andrew Owens, a graduating senior in the Gallivan Program, was named the 2013 Baker Award winner at a recent ceremony of the Indiana Collegiate Press Association on the Indiana University Bloomington campus.

Owens joins Sarah Mervosh, a 2012 Notre Dame graduate and 2010 alumna Jenn Metz as Gallivan Program students who won the honor of being named Collegiate Journalist of the Year in statewide competition involving both public and private universities and colleges throughout Indiana.

In the past year, Owens was also the recipient of the Harry Ornest Memorial Award in Sports Journalism, which supported his summer internship during 2012 at The Los Angeles Times and provided a scholarship for his senior year at Notre Dame.

Mervosh is currently a reporter at The Dallas Morning News, and Metz is an associate producer at ABC World News with Diane Sawyer.

The Gallivan Program offers a minor in journalism for undergraduates pursuing any major at Notre Dame, and it also conducts activities (such as the Red Smith Lecture Series) to advance the understanding of contemporary journalism for the public at large.

New study: Risk factor for depression can be 'contagious'

2013-04-22T13:00:00-04:00

According to a new study from the University of Notre Dame, a particular style of thinking that makes people vulnerable to depression actually can be “contagious” to others and increase their symptoms of depression six months later.

The study, conducted by Notre Dame Psychology Professor Gerald Haeffel and former Notre Dame undergraduate student Jennifer Hames ’09, is published in the journal Clinical Psychological Science.

Research on depression has shown that people who interpret stressful life events as the result of factors they can’t change and as a reflection of their own deficiency are more vulnerable to depression. This “cognitive vulnerability” has been shown to be such a potent risk factor for depression that it can predict who is likely to experience a depressive episode in the future, even if they have never been depressed before.

Though cognitive vulnerability has been shown to solidify in early adolescence and remain stable throughout adulthood, Haeffel theorized that it may be malleable or “contagious” during major life transitions when our environments are in flux.

He tested this hypothesis by tracking 103 pairs of randomly assigned college roommates, all of whom were first-year students. During their first month on campus, the roommates completed a questionnaire that measured their cognitive vulnerability and depressive symptoms. They completed the same questionnaire three months and six months later, and also completed a measure of stressful life events.

The findings provide striking evidence for the contagion effect, confirming the researcher’s initial hypothesis: The results revealed that the first year students who were randomly assigned to a roommate with high levels of cognitive vulnerability were likely to “catch” their roommate’s cognitive style and develop higher levels of cognitive vulnerability; those assigned to roommates who had low initial levels of cognitive vulnerability experienced decreases in their own levels. The contagion effect was evident at both the three-month and six-month assessments.

The most striking finding showed that changes in cognitive vulnerability impacted the risk for future depressive symptoms: Students who showed an increase in cognitive vulnerability in the first three months of college had nearly twice the level of depressive symptoms at six months than those who did not show such an increase.

“Our findings suggest that it may be possible to use an individual’s social environment as part of the intervention process, either as a supplement to existing cognitive interventions or possibly as a stand-alone intervention,” according to Haeffel.

“Our study demonstrates that cognitive vulnerability has the potential to wax and wane over time depending on the social context, which means that cognitive vulnerability should be thought of as plastic rather than immutable.”

Contact: Gerald J. Haeffel, ghaeffel@nd.edu