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Notre Dame-based research coalition launches Indiana COVID-19 Registry

2020-09-01T11:00:00-04:00

In an effort to track the spread and impact of the coronavirus and better inform decision-making at the state and local levels, research leaders at the University of Notre Dame are leveraging the University’s membership in the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute (CTSI) and one of its key programs, All IN for Health, to launch the Indiana COVID-19 Registry.

“Understanding how COVID-19 is affecting the health and well-being — physical, mental and economic — of Indiana residents is critical to our battle against this formidable foe,” said Marie Lynn Miranda, the lead scientist on the registry and the Charles and Jill Fischer Provost at Notre Dame.

Designed as a complement to state and county dashboards, the Indiana COVID-19 Registry will measure economic and health impacts, anticipate health care needs, understand behavior in response to policy changes and identify popular and effective sources of information.

The registry is open to anyone 18 years of age or older and involves introductory and follow-up surveys. The introductory survey asks about background and medical history, mental health, hand-washing habits, household size, recent travel history and health status, among other topics. It takes about 10 minutes to complete and is available in English and Spanish. The follow-up surveys are shorter and will ask similar questions, allowing the registry to track changes in impacts and behavior over time.

The registry will include an online dashboard with information about symptoms and testing, mental health impacts, exposures, public health practices and household impacts at the state and county levels. The dashboard will be made public once adequate data are available. At no time will the dashboard reveal identifying information on registrants.

Data from the registry will be stored in a highly secure system built and maintained by the Center for Research Computing at Notre Dame. Results will be published and updated online, excluding information that could be used to identify any respondents.

“The Indiana CTSI is in a unique position to connect with people across the state, which will help us get more perspective about this unprecedented pandemic,” said Dr. Sarah Wiehe, co-director of the Indiana CTSI. “By understanding the needs of our communities now, as well as over time, we will be better prepared to improve health through research in the future.”

The Indiana COVID-19 Registry is modeled on the COVID-19 Registry at Rice University, where Miranda served as professor of statistics from 2015 to 2020. Miranda was the lead investigator for the Rice registry during her time there. She is now the lead investigator for the Indiana registry.

The ongoing COVID-19 Registry at Rice revealed a lack of screening for the coronavirus and disparate economic impacts based on race among Houston-area residents. At the same time, it showed residents engaging in behaviors such as social distancing and hand-washing to slow the spread of the virus.

For more information or to participate in the registry, visit covreg.crc.nd.edu.

Contact: Erin Blasko, assistant director of media relations, 574-631-4127, eblasko@nd.edu

Galactic halos touching, comprehensive map of Andromeda halo shows

2020-08-28T15:00:00-04:00

A team of scientists led by Nicolas Lehner, research professor at the University of Notre Dame, using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope created a comprehensive map of the halo of plasma surrounding the Andromeda galaxy and discovered that it is already touching the halo of our own Milky Way.

The team’s findings, which appear in the Aug. 27 edition of The Astrophysical Journal, show that the Andromeda galaxy reaches about halfway to the Milky Way (about 1.3 million light-years) and in some directions extends for 2 million light-years.

The study also revealed the halo has a layered structure composed of two nested, distinct shells of gas.

“Understanding the huge halos of gas surrounding galaxies is immensely important,” explained Samantha Berek of Yale University, who is a Research Experience for Undergraduate summer student at Notre Dame. “This reservoir of gas contains fuel for future star formation within the galaxy, as well as outflows from events such as supernovae. It’s full of clues regarding the past and future evolution of the galaxy, and we’re finally able to study it in great detail in our closest galactic neighbor.”

“We find the inner shell that extends to about a half million light-years is far more complex and dynamic,” explained Lehner, an astrophysicist in the Department of Physics. “The outer shell is smoother and hotter. This difference is a likely result from the impact of supernova activity in the galaxy’s disk more directly affecting the inner halo.”

Lehner’s team found the halo to have significant quantities of heavy elements, which are birthed from stars as they explode and die. These heavy metals then migrate to the halo of the galaxy.

The program called Project AMIGA (Absorption Map of Ionized Gas in Andromeda) used the light from 43 quasars. The quasars, situated behind the halo, allowed scientists to study how their light is absorbed by the halo of Andromeda and how the light absorption changes across the halo. The halo of Andromeda is made of rarified and ionized gas, which doesn’t emit easily detectable radiation. Examining the absorption in the light coming from the quasars behind it is the most sensitive way to study the diffuse halo itself. Lehner’s team used Hubble’s Cosmic Origins Spectrograph to study ultraviolet (UV) light from the quasars. Because the UV light is absorbed by Earth’s atmosphere it can only be observed from beyond our atmosphere.

This is not the first time Lehner and the team of researchers have studied Andromeda’s halo. In 2015, they determined Andromeda’s halo was massive. Now, as a result of this new study, the halo has been mapped in more detail offering a better understanding of its size and mass.

“Previously, there was very little information — only six quasars — within 1 million light-years of the galaxy. This new program provides much more information on this inner region of Andromeda’s halo,” explained co-investigator J. Christopher Howk, professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Notre Dame. “Probing gas within this radius is important, as it represents something of a gravitational sphere of influence for Andromeda.”

Owing to our location in the Milky Way, scientists cannot easily determine the depth of our own galaxy’s halo. However, they believe the halos of Andromeda and the Milky Way must be very similar since these two galaxies are quite similar. The two galaxies are on a collision course, and will merge to form a giant elliptical galaxy about 4 billion years from now.

Andromeda is the only galaxy in the universe for which this experiment can be done now, and only with Hubble. “This is truly a unique experiment because only with Andromeda do we have information on its halo along not only one or two sightlines, but over 40,” explained Lehner. “This is groundbreaking for capturing the complexity of a galaxy halo beyond our own Milky Way.”

Originally published by Tammi Freehling at science.nd.edu on Aug. 28.

Alumni Association, Muffet McGraw partner for ‘Meals With Muffet’ food drive

2020-08-28T12:00:00-04:00

The Notre Dame Alumni Association has partnered with former Notre Dame women’s basketball coach Muffet McGraw, Holtz’s Heroes and Bread of Life Drive to launch “Meals With Muffet,” a month-long, nationwide food drive. Meals With Muffet is open to participation by alumni, parents and friends and runs during September, which is National Hunger Awareness Month.

“During my 33-year Notre Dame career, I urged our players to be champions on and off the court and, since my retirement in April, I have tried to do the same,” said McGraw. “Over the past few months, I’ve worked in the South Bend community to collect 20,000 pounds of food for the hungry. I’m excited to work with the Alumni Association, Bread of Life Drive and Holtz’s Heroes, and I challenge the Notre Dame family to work together and help beat one of our toughest opponents yet — hunger.”

In the United States, more than 37 million people, including 11 million children, are food insecure. The Meals With Muffet partnership hopes to collect 100,000 pounds of food during the month to help Notre Dame’s neighbors in need. The initiative provides a service opportunity for clubs, groups, families and individuals, while still following physical distancing guidelines.

“The generosity and the drive of our Notre Dame family never ceases to amaze me. Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, alumni, parents and friends have found new ways to give back to those in need,” said Dolly Duffy, a 1984 Notre Dame graduate and executive director of the Alumni Association. “Meals With Muffet is a wonderful opportunity to safely work together and continue being a force for good in our local communities.”

Participants are invited to visit mealswithmuffet.nd.edu to register, read best practices for hosting a food drive and log their collections to be entered into a drawing for prizes, including signed basketballs from Muffet McGraw and signed footballs from members of Holtz’s Heroes.

The Bread of Life Drive (BOLD) is an annual food drive organized by the Notre Dame Club of Staten Island. Since 1992, the Staten Island BOLD has collected more than 1,285,000 nonperishable food items and inspired similar food drives by other Notre Dame clubs around the country.

Holtz’s Heroes Foundation (formerly Lou’s Lads) is a nonprofit organization named in honor of former Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz and his players at Notre Dame. Holtz’s Heroes is dedicated to providing financial assistance for the educational needs of underprivileged students and supports charitable and educational activities within the communities of its members.

Contact: Erin Blasko, assistant director of media relations, 574-631-4127, eblasko@nd.edu

Notre Dame pivots funding and research to tackle COVID-19

2020-08-28T11:00:00-04:00

The University of Notre Dame’s Advanced Diagnostics and Therapeutics (AD&T) research center announced new awards that will enable faculty researchers to pivot or expand their existing research to address the detection, diagnosis, treatment or prognosis of COVID-19 viral infections and related serious medical conditions.

“Notre Dame researchers are adept at tackling emerging needs and, in the case of this pandemic, they are once again stepping up to the plate,” said Paul Bohn, the Arthur J. Schmitt Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, professor of chemistry and biochemistry, and director of AD&T. “Our goal with offering this new funding is to advance our understanding of the virus and the direct and indirect health problems it can cause.”

The new funding is intended to help faculty researchers build on existing data and technologies and support the rapid progress of promising results to translation or implementation. The recipients and their research projects are as follows:

Merlin Bruening, the Donald and Susan Rice Professor of Engineering at Notre Dame, and Jacqueline Linnes, the Marta E. Gross Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Purdue University, received the award for “Membrane-based quantification of COVID-19 antibodies.” Their goal is to expand on their current National Science Foundation-funded research that supports the development of tools for quantifying the COVID-19 immune response. The funding from AD&T will be used to quantify the capture of COVID-19 antibodies, which will help identify previously infected patients and how infections spread, and determine if immunity is temporary.
Hsueh-Chia Chang, the Bayer Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Notre Dame, and Satyajyoti Senapati, research associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Notre Dame, received the award for “Highly sensitive rapid lateral flow SARS-CoV-2 antigen test.” The researchers aim to expand on their National Institutes of Health-funded project, which is to develop a suite of future microfluidic diagnostic devices for cancer screening, to diagnose viral infections. This new funding will utilize their technologies to help reduce the potential for false negatives by developing a rapid, cheap and accurate point-of-contact COVID-19 test with significantly improved sensitivity and selectivity over current state-of-the-art tests.
Mayland Chang, research professor of chemistry and biochemistry and director of the Chemistry-Biochemistry-Biology Interface Program at Notre Dame, received the award for the “Inhibition of cathepsin-L by (R)-ND-336 as a treatment for COVID-19.” With the support of the Department of Defense, Chang has been investigating the compound (R)-ND-336, which was discovered at Notre Dame, as a clinical treatment for diabetic foot ulcers. Chang and her team have now found that this novel compound inhibits cathepsin-L, which has been shown to activate membrane fusion by SARS-CoV S glycoprotein, which means it could potentially be retargeted as a treatment for COVID-19 patients.
Nosang Myung, the Keating Crawford Endowed Professor in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Notre Dame, received the award for “Nano-enabled sensor system for COVID-19 patient care.” Previous research funded by the NSF, NIH and Naval Sea Systems Command has led Myung and his research team to develop miniaturized gas-sensing systems for varying applications. This new project aims to develop an electronic nose, or E-nose, that can be embedded in ventilators to monitor chemical and physical parameters. This system could also function as a stand-alone wearable safety sensor as outpatient care to those who lost the sense of smell due to COVID-19.
Joshua Shrout, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and earth sciences at Notre Dame, and Bohn received the award for “Identifying behavior and signatures of bacterial secondary infection after primary lung infection with SARS-CoV-2.” For a project funded by the NIH, the researchers are designing new diagnostics informed by their understanding of bacterial interactions and signature biomolecule production. With the AD&T award, Shrout and Bohn will expand this research to identify the behavior and signatures of the potentially dangerous bacterial pneumonia that can follow in patients who are first weakened by a coronavirus infection.
Bradley Smith, the Emil T. Hofman Professor of Science and director of the Integrated Imaging Facility at Notre Dame, received the award for “Testing for acute kidney injury caused by COVID-19.” With NSF support, Smith has been developing novel supramolecular association systems that could potentially indicate kidney malfunction. The new research will apply this work specifically to the early detection of acute kidney injury, which is a common condition that SARS-CoV-2 infected patients are at risk of developing.

When the coronavirus originally emerged, faculty and researchers such as Prakash Nallathamby, associate director of research of AD&T, started tracking the new respiratory illness. As more information became available about the virus, Nallathamby and others at AD&T began identifying research projects that could transition to address the coronavirus as well as funding opportunities to support new research endeavors.

Within a two-month period, Notre Dame researchers applied for $7.2 million in awards from government agencies and private foundations to fund coronavirus-related projects. However, the urgent need for research to tackle this unfamiliar disease also led to the creation of the new AD&T coronavirus funding program.

“Notre Dame has so many biomedical and precision health research interests that we can pursue a top-down approach to tackle COVID-19. Right now, researchers are simultaneously looking at improved surveillance for the disease, accurate diagnoses, effective treatments and quantifying immune response following patient recovery,” said Nallathamby, who is also a research assistant professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering. “These efforts fit well within Notre Dame’s broader commitment to promoting health and well-being, leverages our expertise in bioanalytical metrology and takes full advantage of the University’s broad clinical, pharmaceutical and biotechnology networks.”

AD&T is a University research center at Notre Dame dedicated to combating disease, promoting health and safeguarding the environment. The center aims to accelerate the research of faculty and students, identify and develop bold new ideas that will have real-world impact, create a community with shared interests from among different colleges and disciplines, and support the training of young researchers. AD&T is an intellectual nexus for a unique combination of researchers interested in everything from low-cost chemical measurements to nanoparticle drug delivery to patient adherence to medical regimens. To learn more, visit advanceddiagnostics.nd.edu.

Contact: Arnie Phifer, associate director, Advanced Diagnostics and Therapeutics, adt@nd.edu, 574-631-3057; advanceddiagnostics.nd.edu, @nddiagnostics

Originally published by Brandi Wampler at advanceddiagnostics.nd.edu on Aug. 26.

Notre Dame to begin gradual resumption of in-person classes Sept. 2

2020-08-28T09:50:00-04:00

In an online address to the campus community, University of Notre Dame President Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., announced today that after a two-week break, all in-person undergraduate classes will resume in stages beginning Wednesday (Sept. 2). In-person instruction was suspended and several gathering restrictions were instituted Aug. 18 after a steep rise in new COVID-19 cases on campus.

Since then, the number of new cases has decreased substantially and, while the positivity rate of 10.8 percent is high, it, too, is on the decline, and from Aug. 20 through 25 was 6.3 percent. In addition, more than 1,200 surveillance tests on members of the campus community have been conducted with a less than 1 percent positivity rate.

“With these encouraging numbers, we believe we can plan to return to in-person classes and gradually open up the campus,” Father Jenkins said.

Marie Lynn Miranda, the Charles and Jill Fischer Provost of the University, and Executive Vice President Shannon Cullinan will review the improvements made over the past two weeks and send students, faculty and staff more information about the gradual resumption of in-person classes and staged re-opening of campus spaces.

Father Jenkins asked all members of the campus community to commit to wearing masks, maintaining physical distance, washing hands, completing the daily health check, reporting for surveillance testing if called and limiting social gatherings to 10 or fewer people while observing health guidelines.

“If we adopt these practices, we can have a safe and successful semester on campus,” he said.

Father Jenkins acknowledged that the “virus hit us harder and more swiftly than we expected, and we fell behind. However, through the efforts of many, we have adapted and improved our systems and procedures. We are now in a much stronger position.”

He said that bringing attention to student gatherings as the source of many infections was “not to cast blame, but to make us all aware of the consequences of our actions on our community and our ability to continue the semester here.”

The University will continue to refer serious violations of health precautions to its conduct process. To date, hearings for 87 students are in process, involving violations of varying levels of gravity. “Although we do not comment on the outcome of hearings, I assure you that we will respond to violations with the seriousness they deserve,” Father Jenkins said.

He went on to speak of his pride in all members of the Notre Dame community.

“I’m proud of staff members who have gone above and beyond their ordinary responsibilities to keep the campus open and safe,” he said. “I’m proud of the faculty who, despite challenging conditions, have demonstrated such dedication to teaching our students, and perhaps above all, I’m proud of our students, who have responded to the challenges, adopted the health protocols and joined together to enable us to continue the semester.”

He concluded by saying: “The virus dealt us a blow and we stumbled, but we steadied ourselves and now we move on. Let us redouble our diligence in observing health protocols and recommit to a semester of learning and growth. Together, we are writing one of the great comebacks in Notre Dame history.”

Statement from Notre Dame President Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., on remarks by former Coach Lou Holtz

2020-08-27T15:00:00-04:00

“While Coach Lou Holtz is a former coach at Notre Dame, his use of the University’s name at the Republican National Convention must not be taken to imply that the University endorses his views, any candidate or any political party. Moreover, we Catholics should remind ourselves that while we may judge the objective moral quality of another’s actions, we must never question the sincerity of another’s faith, which is due to the mysterious working of grace in that person’s heart. In this fractious time, let us remember that our highest calling is to love.”

IDEA Center to become the outsourced commercialization office for Saint Mary’s College

2020-08-26T11:00:00-04:00

The IDEA Center at the University of Notre Dame will become the outsourced commercialization office for Saint Mary’s College under a new collaboration that is part of a wide-ranging acceleration of programming to support innovation and entrepreneurship at Saint Mary’s. Saint Mary’s faculty and staff will be able to access resources at the IDEA Center to take their research and ideas and turn them into businesses. Ten Saint Mary’s student workers will be hired to work as analysts and startup coaches at the IDEA Center and will be involved every step of the way in the commercialization process.

“This is a mutually beneficial win that further strengthens the ties between Notre Dame and Saint Mary's,” said James Thompson, the University of Notre Dame’s associate vice president for innovation. “Saint Mary's will be able to synergize the promising research and discovery being conducted there and provide their students with hands-on experience in entrepreneurial endeavors, while the IDEA Center will be able to work with 10 of the college's brightest students.”

Saint Mary’s is elevating its broad focus on innovation under President Katie Conboy, building on 10 years of work with local women entrepreneurs through the SPARK women’s business accelerator, main street businesses and small commercial hubs as well as high-potential startups.

“This collaboration nurtures a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship,” Conboy said. “We’re encouraging faculty, staff and students to learn about the resources and startup ideation ongoing at the IDEA Center. This partnership really complements our existing efforts and is a great enhancement of resources. Students working at the IDEA Center will develop highly sought-after skill sets that are very attractive to companies, and their involvement will really pay off.”

Willow Wetherall, director of the Women's Entrepreneurship Initiative at Saint Mary's College, will advertise the opportunities at the IDEA Center and help coordinate the hiring of student startup coaches and technical market analysts.

Originally published by IDEA Center at ideacenter.nd.edu on Aug. 26.

Notre Dame London Global Gateway, campus partners launch program on Hitchcock’s adaptations of London-based novels

2020-08-25T13:30:00-04:00

The Notre Dame London Global Gateway, along with partners from across the University of Notre Dame campus, has launched the London Book Club, an interactive, educational enrichment program featuring Notre Dame’s expert faculty. Throughout the year, relevant themes will be selected, and participants will be invited to join four weekly meetings to discuss books, excerpts, films and other materials.

London’s first program, “Hitchcock in London,” is led by Susan Ohmer, the William T. and Helen Kuhn Carey Associate Professor of Modern Communication in the Department of Film, Television and Theatre.

"Alfred Hitchcock's films are well known for their creative use of locations, and the films we will watch illustrate how he explored the artistic possibilities of London,” said Ohmer. “Hitchcock was born in London, and this series gives us a chance to see how his career developed in the city. The series will also enable us to look closely at the imaginative ways that directors and screenwriters work with literary sources to adapt them for the screen.”

“Hitchcock in London” includes excerpts of books the iconic director adapted for film, film viewings, explainer videos from Ohmer, a LinkedIn discussion group and weekly interactive Zoom sessions. The program is free and open to all, and it is hosted exclusively on ThinkND, Notre Dame’s open, online learning community brought to you by the Alumni Association.

In addition to offering the opportunity to learn from and interact with Notre Dame’s expert faculty, the program allows participants to engage more deeply with United Kingdom culture through the London Global Gateway and offers unique insight into the University’s presence abroad.

“So many of our alumni studied abroad — for a semester or for a full year, in Tokyo, Sydney, London or dozens of other locations — as a way to experience new cultures, new people and new mindsets,” said Dolly Duffy, executive director of the Notre Dame Alumni Association. “Whether you studied abroad, traveled overseas or want to use literature and film as your guide around the world, we hope the London Book Club will provide our alumni, parents and friends with the opportunity to expand their knowledge and appreciation for different cultures.”

“Exploring London, a city that is both global and European, through film and novels enriches our understanding of this important place and its culture,” said Clemens Sedmak, interim director of the Nanovic Institute and professor of social ethics. “In this moment when travel to London is complicated, the Nanovic Institute enthusiastically joins this collaboration to share the insights of Professor Ohmer, who consistently enhances our appreciation with her keen insight and whose experience in London will enrich our understanding of the city and these works.”

The first week of “Hitchcock in London” is an introduction to Marie Belloc Lowndes’ “The Lodger,” which Hitchcock adapted for his film of the same name, with the initial Zoom discussion on Sept. 9 (Wednesday). The remaining weeks take a closer look at Hitchcock’s “The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog,” “Secret Agent” by Joseph Conrad, and Hitchcock’s adaptation of this, titled “Sabotage.” While the book club is presented as a four-week experience, participants are invited to join for any session.

“I am delighted that the London Global Gateway is collaborating with ThinkND on this wonderful Hitchcock in London project with our friend and colleague Professor Susan Ohmer,” said Josh Copeland, executive director of the London Global Gateway. “This is a great opportunity for alums and friends to join together in thinking about London and its place in the history of literature and film. I look forward to learning alongside the rest of the ThinkND community as Professor Ohmer leads us along this journey through Hitchcock's London.”

Partners for the London Book Club include the College of Arts and Letters, ND International, the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center, the Nanovic Institute, ND Learning and the Notre Dame Alumni Association.

Originally published by Joanna Byrne at london.nd.edu on Aug. 19.

Auditors’ reputations linked to client portfolio, study finds

2020-08-24T14:45:00-04:00

It’s an ongoing challenge for the average consumer to accurately assess the quality and value of professional service providers, whether it’s a mechanic or a medical professional, a real estate agent or a plumber, an auditor or a financial planner.

For most, the divining rod is reputation. The importance consumers place on reputation influences how service providers do business in order to manage their image.

For firms that perform external audits, strategic reputation management likely involves charging riskier clients a premium and ensuring their clients do not make reporting decisions that could reflect badly on the audit firm.

Zachary Kowaleski

It could also mean that auditors are selective when it comes to who is in their client portfolio and actively screen out companies whose past or potential future behavior might harm an auditor’s reputation. That strategy is what the University of Notre Dame’s Zachary Kowaleski and a group of researchers set out to explore in their paper “Auditors are Known by the Companies They Keep,” published in the Journal of Accounting and Economics. The paper is co-authored by Jonathan Cook of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, Michael Minnis of the University of Chicago, Andrew Sutherland of MIT and Karla Zehms of the University of Wisconsin.

“The central hypothesis of our paper is that an auditor’s reputation is in part formed by its client portfolio — auditors are known by the companies they keep,” they wrote. “Producers with a reputation for providing high quality services to high quality clients can, in turn, charge a premium.” They also propose that auditors with reputation-sensitive clients are least likely to accept or keep others with high misconduct risk.

Kowaleski, an assistant professor of accountancy at Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, likens it to the Aesop’s Fable about a man who, when in the market to buy a donkey, took time to observe how his potential purchase behaved with the rest of the animals in his herd. The donkey immediately made a companion of the most idle donkey in the stable, so the fable goes, and the man returned the animal to the seller, noting that it would act the same as the one he chose for its companion.

“The moral of the story: You are known by the company you keep,” Kowaleski said. “In this study, we demonstrate that this also appears to be true of auditors. We show that an auditor's clients have similar misbehavior profiles that are unrelated to audit work. Furthermore, we observe evidence that auditors protect their reputations by avoiding clients who could harm their reputation.”

An auditor’s reputation, he noted, can take a hit when its client is caught behaving illegally or unethically. “In 2016, KPMG received scrutiny in response to the Wells Fargo account opening scandal even though Wells Fargo financial statements were not materially misstated,” Kowaleski said of the company’s acknowledged awareness of the fake customer accounts created by bank employees.

To study how reputation concerns factor into auditor-client relationships, the researchers aggregated more than 1.2 million adviser records from the U.S. broker-dealer market between 2001 and 2017. They also created measures for auditor misconduct disclosures and auditor reputation sensitivity and examined auditor’s client acceptance and continuation decisions.

Newly formed relationships between auditors and clients offered the researchers one window into the question of whether the existing clients in an auditor’s portfolio and newly acquired clients share a similar track record of misconduct behavior. The researchers theorized that if new client misconduct has no litigation risk, or the risk is such that auditors can mitigate it simply by charging a premium, no relationship would be found. But even controlling for a number of factors, they found “an economically and statistically significant” relationship. They also found that “audit-client pairs that are mismatched with respect to misconduct separate sooner than other pairs.” In fact, auditors with high reputations and clients with high misconduct had the shortest of all relationships.

Some auditors cater to clients who are particularly concerned with their auditor’s reputation, such as a bank or IPO, and this concern is reflected in who those audit firms opt to add or remove from their client portfolio. “Thus far, our evidence indicates that both audit firms and individual audit offices avoid high misconduct broker-dealers when they have reputation-sensitive clients in non-broker-dealer markets,” Kowaleski said.

The study revealed higher misconduct rates among broker-dealer clients whose auditors did not also serve bank clients. This suggests that “misconduct matching stems from reputation concerns rather than specialization,” the researchers wrote. They also found that even if they eliminated misconduct such as fraud or forgery as well as clients whose audit risk is inherently higher, the results were the same, indicating that reputation concern and not simply litigation risk was a factor.

Their analysis of the reputation management aspect of audit-client relationships also revealed something unexpected. “We were surprised to find that an auditor’s reputation for accepting high-misconduct clients predicts their new clients’ future misconduct,” Kowaleski said. While he and his co-authors stress that it should not be interpreted causally, they found that clients matching with lower reputation auditors have a higher rate of new misconduct incidents in the next year. “While this finding does not discern between sorting and treatment mechanisms,” they wrote, “it could provide a useful reference point for the 56 percent of Americans who rely on financial advisers as their conduit to engage the financial markets.”

Kowaleski, who studies the effect of the institutional setting on behavior, says their analysis also helps academics “parse apart two theories that often move together — reputation and litigation risk — emphasizing that reputation is important on its own.” He adds that it could be helpful to regulators concerned with financial misbehavior in the broker-dealer industry, as it illuminates an "unintended consequence of audit mandates: non-discerning auditors emerge to serve clients with low endogenous demand for auditing."

Originally posted on Mendoza News.

Notre Dame receives $40 million federal award to improve global education outcomes

2020-08-24T11:00:00-04:00

The University of Notre Dame’s Pulte Institute for Global Development — together with the Institute for Educational Initiatives (IEI) and its Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child — has won a $40 million cooperative agreement to lead a five-year program to advance U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) learning priorities in the global education sector. This USAID E3/Education Office award is one of the largest federal grants Notre Dame has ever received.

The Higher Education for Leadership, Innovation and Exchange — Supporting Holistic and Actionable Research in Education program, funded by USAID, will strengthen research capacity and knowledge translation to fill critical gaps in the education sector.

“The Pulte Institute and IEI act as an important mechanism in carrying out Notre Dame’s distinctive mission to serve those in need, and this award will be monumental in helping propel the University forward in that role,” said Robert J. Bernhard, vice president for research and professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering.

While progress has been made in recent years to conduct research that strengthens education systems in developing countries, more targeted research is required to create systemic and sustainable change. This program, called HELIX SHARE, will bring local scholars and higher education institutions together to address these challenges and opportunities in a number of low- and middle-income countries, with a view to developing a replicable model to guide decision-makers.

“This program embraces Notre Dame’s vision of development as accompaniment, where a deep appreciation of local capacity and ownership is viewed as the cornerstone of effective development practice,” said Ray Offenheiser, the William J. Pulte Director of the Pulte Institute and professor of the practice within the Keough School of Global Affairs. “By gathering, translating and using research more effectively, we hope to meaningfully impact global education policy and practice.”

The Notre Dame team will mentor an impressive coalition of partners in higher education across Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia to implement the program. The first year will convene critical country-level and regional stakeholders to identify pathways to address learning agenda questions around education in crises and conflict, foundational learning skills, youth and workforce development and higher education. Additionally, the program will offer a series of capacity-strengthening actions — including trainings, workshops, mentorship and close accompaniment — to ensure that individuals and institutions engaged in research generation, translation and utilization ecology are equipped to work together to advance education interests.

“Everything about the award is exciting, not least the success in building a remarkable global coalition of experts in overcoming the significant obstacles to delivering quality education to underprivileged populations,” said Scott Appleby, the Marilyn Keough Dean of the Keough School. “The bottom line, however, is the opportunity a generation of children, youth and young adults in low- and middle-income countries will now have to gain knowledge and develop skills enabling them to contribute to the private-sector workforce, civil society and government. This program is what we mean by development that is responsive to the demands of human dignity.”

The Pulte Institute, which is part of the Keough School of Global Affairs, will lead management, oversight and administration of the program. The program team will be led by Tom Purekal, director of the Pulte Institute’s Innovation and Practice division, alongside four full-time team members: Jerry Wright, program director; Megan Gavin, technical director; Estela Rivero, monitoring evaluation learning and knowledge management director; and Nancy Ryberg, research specialist. The program will also invoke the contributions of many other individuals across the Pulte Institute, the Keough School, IEI and the Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child.

“This award represents a major milestone for the University of Notre Dame in its continued growth as a leader in international educational development research and practice,” said Neil Boothby, founding director of the Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child within IEI. “It brings a substantial influx of resources at a propitious time to bolster our mission to improve the education of all youth, particularly the disadvantaged.”

HELIX SHARE is expected to launch in September 2020. For more information, contact Tom Purekal at tpureka1@nd.edu.

Virtual ThinkND series explores communicating across cultures

2020-08-21T14:45:00-04:00

A new fall online series offered by the University of Notre Dame Alumni Association is aimed at helping participants develop communication skills critical to enhancing cultural awareness, knowledge and practical skills in the increasingly diverse contemporary workplace.

Communicating Across Cultures explores the concepts underlying effective communications that strike deeply into the core of our very identities — customs, ethnicities and a wide range of other factors that help to explain why we behave the way we do.

The series is offered as part of ThinkND, a Notre Dame Alumni Association initiative designed to help Notre Dame alumni and friends easily access free, online learning opportunities from across the University. It is co-sponsored by the Mendoza College of Business, the Eugene D. Fanning Center for Business Communication at Mendoza, Notre Dame International and the Keough School’s McKenna Center for Human Development and Global Business.

“From dealing with the effects of a global pandemic to having long-overdue discussions for racial justice, the need for clear communication and understanding in professional and personal settings may never be greater than it is right now,” said Dolly Duffy, executive director of the Notre Dame Alumni Association. "These discussions will provide the Notre Dame family with perspectives and insights from various industries to build their own strong workplace and community cultures."

The four-week program features two components: brief, pre-recorded video presentations by noted business communication expert James O’Rourke IV, management teaching professor at the Mendoza College of Business, and live, online discussions with chief communications officers from SiriusXM, AT&T, Southwest Airlines and BioMarin.

Jim O'Rourke

The video segments cover 14 topic areas including understanding culture, global communication skills and cultural fluency. The online discussions are guided by O’Rourke and Amanda G. McKendree, the Arthur F. and Mary J. O'Neil Director of the Fanning Center for Business Communication at Mendoza College of Business.

“Our notion of culture can take on a wide range of meanings,” O’Rourke said. “It can refer to our possessions or surroundings, our values and beliefs, as well as our behavior.” The role of culture in our organizations, our society and communities has taken on new meaning and importance. “As a result,” he added, “we conclude that now is the moment to expand the conversation. Our aim is to share what we know, both as academics and as corporate executives, and to ask what’s on your minds.”

“Recognized as a leader in business communication education and training, the Fanning Center is delighted to contribute to this series by connecting our expertise with the important work that these leaders do in creating and communicating culture,” McKendree said. “Each guest brings a unique case study and lens for examining significant questions that are relevant to each of us and our organizations.”

The discussions take place at noon on the following Fridays:

Sept. 4: Denise Karkos, senior vice president and chief marketing officer for SiriusXM.
Sept. 18: Chris Murphy, vice president and deputy chief communications officer for AT&T.
Oct. 2: Linda Rutherford, senior vice president and chief communications officer for Southwest Airlines.
Oct. 16: Debra Charlesworth, vice president and chief communications officer for BioMarin.

The videos and discussion events are free and available to the public.

Visit ThinkND: Communicating Across Cultures to register for the series and for more information.

Originally posted on Mendoza News.

Gaps in early surveillance of coronavirus led to record-breaking US trajectory

2020-08-21T14:00:00-04:00

As the United States exceeds 5 million reported coronavirus cases — the world’s first country to do so — epidemiologists have pinpointed what helped to set the country on this path.

Research from the University of Notre Dame estimates that more than 100,000 people were already infected with COVID-19 by early March — when only 1,514 cases and 39 deaths had been officially reported and before a national emergency was declared. The study provides insight into how limited testing and gaps in surveillance during the initial phase of the epidemic resulted in so many cases going undetected. The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Alex Perkins

“We weren’t testing enough,” said Alex Perkins, associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, an expert in infectious disease epidemiology and population biology and the lead of the study. “The number of unobserved infections appears to be due to very low rates of case detection during a critical time, when the epidemic was really starting to take hold in this country. Part of it was the availability of testing, but another huge part was case definitions and the fact that they were overly restrictive early on.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the United States was reported in January. Early guidance on identifying possible infection included respiratory symptoms, and travel to Wuhan, China — where an outbreak occurred in December 2019.

“While we were focusing on people coming back from China, we were ignoring people coming from Europe, and actually quite a bit of the initial seeding of the virus into various parts of the United States came from Italy,” Perkins said.

While awareness and concern over COVID-19 grew from January to March, it wasn’t until Feb. 29 that Washington became the first state to declare a state of emergency — closing schools and restaurants and imposing restrictions on large gatherings. By mid-March several states followed, but a lack of a coordinated national response created a number of variables as each state decided for itself how to react to a rising number of cases.

By focusing their analysis on the January to March timeframe, when little to no action had been taken on a wide scale, Perkins and his team were able to incorporate a constant into their models. While other studies provide a sense of how school closures and lockdowns slowed the spread of the virus, looking at transmission for the first three months of the year gave the epidemiologists a clearer picture of how the virus emerged and spread throughout the country so quickly.

“It was such a crucial period in terms of how this situation started,” said Perkins. “We look at the United States now and compare it to other countries like South Korea or Germany, New Zealand or Vietnam, any number of countries who have done a much, much better job controlling transmission. The key differences really come down to the time period we examine in this study. Those countries had adequate surveillance up and running at that time, whereas we show that throughout most of February the United States missed the vast majority of infections that were already out there. This particular timeframe that we focus on is really important for figuring out how we got here in the first place.”

The study used a simulation model beginning on Jan. 1, using data reported by Johns Hopkins University on confirmed cases and deaths, accounting for asymptomatic infections, case fatality rates and local transmission. Perkins and his team first generated an estimate of total infections in the U.S. through March 12. The team then factored in how detection of symptomatic infections changed over time and estimated the number of unobserved infections during this time.

A significant aspect of the analysis is the model’s incorporation of many uncertainties that played out in the early days of the epidemic in the U.S., which Perkins said speaks to the inherent nature of a novel and emerging infectious disease. The number of unobserved and unreported infections also speaks to how critical containment strategies are when battling infectious diseases.

“I think the fact that there were so many infections by the second half of February speaks to the importance of and what we could have done in terms of containment,” said Perkins. “If you think about Ebola or SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) or other emerging infectious diseases, there have been cases that show up in the U.S. or other countries where officials move quickly to get ahead of them. They isolate those people, they do contact tracing — and transmission is extinguished. I think a lot of us were hoping that would be the situation with this disease. By the time we got to February, the problem had grown so big, containing the virus wasn’t possible.”

The potential for misdiagnosis and the limitations of surveillance are huge issues across infectious diseases, especially emerging infectious diseases, he added. As illustrated in the COVID-19 study, while public health officials must work quickly to understand how a new virus functions, without appropriate testing or coordinated response strategies the risk grows for infections to go unreported.

Perkins is an affiliated member of Notre Dame’s Eck Institute for Global Health and Environmental Change Initiative. Co-leads of the study include Sean M. Cavany and Sean M. Moore, and co-authors include Anita Lerch, Rachel J. Oidtman and Marya Poterek, all at Notre Dame.

The study originally appeared prior to peer review on medRxiv, a preprint server for health sciences research.

The study was supported by the National Science Foundation through a Rapid Response Research (RAPID) grant.

Contact: Jessica Sieff, assistant director of media relations, 574-631-3933, jsieff@nd.edu

New ThinkND discussion series brings leaders across industries together to share successes, perspectives

2020-08-20T16:00:00-04:00

The Inspired Leadership Initiative and the Notre Dame Alumni Association have partnered to launch Inspiring Conversations, a new discussion series that will invite leaders from a broad spectrum of disciplines addressing their approach to leading people in this ever-changing world. Inspiring Conversations will welcome thoughtful, engaged and passionate people to address the challenges they and their organizations face in health care, food production, retail, ministry, athletics, academia and publishing. Each has a unique message to help us all as we navigate through these unique times and future challenges.

“This series is important at all times, but especially today as leaders contend with the challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic and the renewed awareness to address racial injustice,” said Tom Schreier, founding director of the Inspired Leadership Initiative at Notre Dame. “The leaders we are fortunate to have in these conversations have charisma, voice and humility coupled with the courage, purpose and inner strength to lead their organizations effectively. There is much to be learned from these conversations.”

During these interactive, live sessions presented exclusively on ThinkND, leaders will also discuss long-term changes in their industries and share their driving philosophies and leadership styles. These in-depth conversations will allow guests to talk about professional successes, but also their underlying philosophies of purpose, alignment and spirituality and how they have been able to build trust in their organizations through humility, confidence and purpose.

“Regardless of where you work, what your career level, or your own professional experiences, Inspiring Conversations will provide the Notre Dame family with a unique look at success and leadership,” said Dolly Duffy, executive director of the Notre Dame Alumni Association. “We are excited to partner with ILI on this project and provide these insights to our alumni, parents and friends.”

The first guest for Inspiring Conversations is Penny Wheeler, the president and CEO of Allina Health, at 1 p.m. Tuesday (Aug. 25). Other guests include former Notre Dame basketball coach Muffet McGraw and Dave MacLennan, the chairman and CEO of Cargill. To register for the discussions and see the complete list and schedule of speakers, visit ThinkND.

Inspiring Conversations is hosted by the Inspired Leadership Initiative (ILI) at the University of Notre Dame. ILI is a program for accomplished individuals from all disciplines (business, nonprofit, academic and others) who have completed their chosen careers and wish to spend an academic year at Notre Dame — taking advantage of the University's vast array of resources — to pivot to their next stage in life and continue as a force for good in this world. ILI fellows have the unique opportunity to reflect on their past experience and shape the direction of their future, while also sharing their wisdom, experience and knowledge with the Notre Dame community.

Originally published by Lauren Fox at ili.nd.edu on Aug. 20.

Notre Dame-backed solar project breaks ground in St. Joseph County

2020-08-20T14:00:00-04:00

Indiana Michigan Power (I&M) broke ground recently on a $37 million solar project that will provide clean energy credits equal to 10 percent of the University of Notre Dame’s total demand for electricity, helping the University meet its goals around clean, renewable energy.

“This is the next big step for us with regard to the use of clean, renewable solar energy to aid or offset campus power production, and a piece of a larger puzzle in terms of our overall approach to sustainability,” said Paul Kempf, assistant vice president for utilities and maintenance at Notre Dame. “We’re pleased to partner with I&M on this project, and look forward to the benefits it will provide.”

Crews started driving posts into the ground in the area of Cleveland and Bittersweet roads, along the Indiana Toll Road in northeast St. Joseph County, to support the 57,000 photovoltaic panels that will make up the 200-acre St. Joseph Solar Farm.

Designed to be I&M’s largest solar project, the 22,000-kilowatt facility will power the equivalent of 2,700 homes annually, providing clean energy options to local consumers and helping to attract environmentally minded businesses to the area. It will also provide educational opportunities for local youths and adults, including K-12 and college students.

As a partner in the project, Notre Dame has committed to purchase 40 percent of total output from the facility in the form of clean energy credits over 30 years, equal to about 10 percent of the University’s overall electrical usage. The credits will be used to offset carbon emissions on campus, where the University has pledged to reduce such emissions by 50 percent based on 2005 levels by 2030.

Work on the facility, which will be solely owned and operated by I&M, is expected to wrap up in the spring.

“This partnership enables us to meet our goals around sustainability, and one of those goals is to generate at least 10 percent of our energy from renewable or recoverable sources,” said Carol Mullaney, senior director of sustainability at Notre Dame.

“I&M is pleased to partner with the University of Notre Dame on the St. Joseph Solar Farm, which will build upon local green energy in the area and assist on economic development efforts to attract businesses looking for renewable energy options,” Toby Thomas, I&M president and chief operating officer, said. “I&M is dedicated to transforming our energy generation fleet for our customers and the communities we serve. This facility will provide boundless clean energy options for the area and educational opportunities for future generations.”

Notre Dame currently maintains three solar arrays separate from I&M: a 10-kilowatt array atop Fitzpatrick Hall, a 50-kilowatt array atop Stinson-Remick Hall and a 140-kilowatt array on Kenmore Street in South Bend. The Kenmore array provides one-third of the power for an adjacent warehouse, which the University uses primarily for storage.

All are part of a long-term strategy to improve sustainability campuswide, consistent with the University’s Catholic mission and values and the pope’s encyclical on climate change, which calls for “swift and unified global action” on the issue.

Last year alone, the University partnered with Grind2Energy and Homestead Dairy to convert food waste to energy, commissioned a new geothermal heating and cooling plant and broke ground on a hydroelectric facility at Seitz Park in South Bend. The hydro facility will meet 7 percent of the University’s electrical needs and offset nearly 9,700 tons of carbon dioxide annually.

“All these projects — and other projects like conservation projects and energy efficiency projects — are working together to reduce our carbon footprint, with the long-term goal of trying to get to carbon neutral,” said Kempf.

For more information, visit green.nd.edu.

Contact: Erin Blasko, assistant director of media relations, 574-631-4127, eblasko@nd.edu

Researchers developing accurate storm models as climate changes affect Alaska’s coastline and residents

2020-08-20T12:00:00-04:00

Alaska’s tidal coastline spans over 46,600 miles, more than that of the lower 48 states combined. Portions of Alaska’s coast are among the nation’s most vulnerable to geohazards from climate change, extra-tropical storm surge, wind waves, tsunamis, ice and erosion. Because of this there is a critical need to improve water-level forecasting tools and the density of the water-level measurement network statewide.

A team of researchers at the University of Notre Dame is developing an integrated wave-surge-ice forecast model to more accurately predict coastal water levels, currents, waves, ice and related flood hazards on Alaska’s coastal floodplains. The team’s work will help Alaskan communities assess threats from a specific storm and determine the potential impact of a flood and evaluate safe evacuation routes.

“The Alaskan coast, an irreplaceable natural and economic resource, encompasses an extensive continental shelf and coastal floodplains,” said Joannes J. Westerink, the Joseph and Nona Ahearn Professor of Computational Science and Henry J. Massman Chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences at Notre Dame. “Strong winter storms, changing sea ice cover, wind waves and the intricacies of air-sea momentum transfer make predicting water levels and flood-related hazards a challenge.”

Alaska’s changing environment, highlighted by sustained warmth, less and more fragmented sea ice and late ice formation and early ice break-up, is also causing problems, Westerink said. For example, sea ice modulates regional storm surge response and can either mitigate storm surge or greatly enhance it. Sea ice can also effectively damp out wind waves. Correctly simulating this complex physics is particularly critical during winter months when the arctic sees its largest and most intense storms.

Westerink and his team will integrate information on surge and tides; wind waves; and ocean temperatures, salinities, and currents; along with sea ice properties by coupling several existing models. Together these models can better account for the combined processes of the ocean around Alaska, producing more accurate forecasts as part of the integrated Alaska Coastal Ocean Forecast System.

“The linkages and interactions between the four existing models will help us better visualize the impact of storm events,” said Westerink. “Each model focuses on a specific process in the environment and will inform the other models, so we’ll be able to span the entire energy spectrum of the ocean. The combined model physics, together with the implementation of high-resolution unstructured computational meshes in the nearshore and coastal floodplains, will produce highly localized results, giving communities a better picture of an event and helping ensure their safety.”

Westerink, will serve as the principal investigator on this project. Other researchers at Notre Dame who will contribute to the project include Damrongsak Wirasaet, research associate professor; David Richter, associate professor; Guoming Ling, doctoral research associate; and Mindo Choi, research fellow.

The team also includes researchers from the University of Texas at Austin; The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory; Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research at the University of Michigan; Alaska Ocean Observing System; Axiom Data Science; NOAA’s National Center for Environmental Prediction; and NOAA’s National Ocean Service — Coast Survey and Development Laboratory.

Project collaborators include the Alaskan Division of Geological & Geophysical Surveys and Alaska’s National Weather Service and Weather Forecast Offices. Partners include the Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys, Western Alaska Land Conservation Cooperative, and Alaska’s NOAA National Weather Service Weather Forecast offices. The project is funded by an Integrated Ocean Observing System, Ocean Technology Transition Project Grant.

Westerink is an affiliated member of Notre Dame’s Environmental Change Initiative.

Contact: Jessica Sieff, assistant director of media relations, 574-631-3933, jsieff@nd.edu

McGrath Institute for Church Life invites reflection on, devotion to saints in online lecture series

2020-08-19T14:00:00-04:00

The McGrath Institute for Church Life is inviting remote audiences to join University of Notre Dame faculty and staff for an online lecture series taking place this fall. The series is self-paced and encourages participants to learn about and foster devotion to six saints whose feast days fall between September and December.

“A Season with the Saints” is a continuation of the McGrath Institute’s efforts to provide dynamic online resources during the COVID-19 pandemic. The series features presentations that were previously delivered by Notre Dame faculty and staff to a live, on-campus audience. Released in a virtual format suitable for group study or individual users, each lecture will include a brief written introduction and discussion questions.

“A Season with the Saints” will be released on Aug. 26 and include presentations on St. Teresa of Calcutta, St. Padre Pio, St. Thérèse of Lisieux, St. John Henry Newman, St. Gertrude the Great and St. Nicholas. Participants will be asked to create a login to view the presentations, each of which can be accessed until Dec. 20. This series is a project of the Sullivan Family Saints Initiative.

“The saints who are featured in these lectures are living witnesses to the life of Christ, and when we contemplate the saints they become our contemporaries,” said John C. Cavadini, the McGrath-Cavadini Director of the McGrath Institute for Church Life. “To be a saint is to give yourself over to the love of God and the love of neighbor, in Christ. Our lecturers, therefore, are not content to simply present biographical details; instead, they look for and seek to present a vision of the glory of God that has been splendidly revealed in this particular member of the Body of Christ.”

If you’d like to receive a notification when “A Season with the Saints” becomes available, submit your email address below.

Contact: Amy North, program director of communications, 574-631-2894, anorth1@nd.edu

Originally published by Anna Bradley at mcgrath.nd.edu on Aug. 18.

Notre Dame enacts two weeks of remote instruction

2020-08-18T16:00:00-04:00

University of Notre Dame President Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., announced today that, effective Wednesday, in-person classes for the University’s undergraduate students are suspended until Sept. 2 and for graduate and professional students until Aug. 24, replaced by remote instruction only because positive rates for the coronavirus continue to climb.

“With the advice and encouragement of Dr. Mark Fox of the St. Joseph County Health Department, we believe we can take steps short of sending students home for remote instruction, at least for the time being, while still protecting the health and safety of the campus community,” Father Jenkins told students in a virtual meeting this afternoon.

“The virus is a formidable foe,” Father Jenkins said in announcing enhanced testing for students experiencing symptoms and surveillance testing for those without symptoms. “For the past week, it has been winning. Let us as the Fighting Irish join together to contain it.”

Since classes resumed Aug. 10, Notre Dame has recorded a steady increase in positive rates among students, mainly seniors living off-campus. As of noon today, 147 people have tested positive among the 927 tested since Aug. 3. None were hospitalized, and all but one — a staff member — were students. Most resided off-campus, linked to off-campus gatherings where neither masks were worn nor physical distancing observed.

“Our contact-tracing analysis indicates that most infections are coming from off-campus gatherings,” Father Jenkins said. “Students infected at those gathering passed it on to others, who in turn have passed the virus on to others, resulting in the positive cases we have seen.”

Father Jenkins also asked students to help in identifying others who have been flagrantly violating safety protocols. “For your sake and the sake of our community and for continuing our semester on campus, please observe health protocols and avoid behavior that puts yourself or others at risk,” Father Jenkins said.

The University also announced these measures:

Until further notice, off-campus students should not visit campus. On-campus students should refrain from leaving campus except under emergency circumstances.
Student gatherings off or on campus are restricted to 10 people or fewer.
All research laboratories, core facilities and libraries remain open to graduate students, faculty and staff.
The COVID-19 Response Unit, the University Testing Center and Notre Dame’s quarantine and isolation facilities will remain fully operational.
All students, faculty and staff are reminded to complete their daily health checks.
Varsity athletic teams that are subject to routine surveillance testing may continue to gather for sanctioned activities according to established protocols and will be closely monitored.

Without action by Congress, US Postal Service has about one year to survive, expert says

2020-08-18T15:00:00-04:00

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy will testify Friday (Aug. 21) before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and the U.S. House of Representatives will return early from recess this weekend to vote on legislation to boost the United States Postal Service before the November presidential election.

The crisis at the Postal Service has become a major election year issue with DeJoy enacting cuts and changes that have disrupted mail delivery while President Donald Trump criticizes mail-in voting. DeJoy announced today (Aug. 18) he will halt controversial cost-cutting initiatives until after the election.

James O’Rourke

Without action by Congress to fund a service that is essential to every American, however, the Postal Service has at best a year to survive, according to James O’Rourke, professor of management at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business.

“For more than a dozen years, the USPS has been headed for trouble,” said O’Rourke, who has written about and been interviewed extensively about the Postal Service. “In recent days, that trajectory has grown steeper and picked up momentum. The post office will be out of money by next summer, unable to meet payroll, buy motor fuel or purchase essential supplies from vendors. By August of 2021, your mailbox will be empty.”

That’s not for lack of effort on the part of postmasters and letter carriers across the nation, according to O’Rourke.

“It’s a deliberate scheme of starvation on the part of administration officials who seek to cripple the Postal Service,” he said. “It began some years ago as new-age conservatives sought to privatize as much of the U.S. government as they could. Selling the Postal Service to a private enterprise would relieve the administration of both responsibility and an admittedly limited financial obligation. It would provide the private sector with a grand opportunity to generate a cash stream that would be essentially unregulated.

“The more serious, near-term problem, of course, is the notion that the postmaster general and his senior staff could properly claim that they will be unable to deliver absentee ballots by mail in time to be counted,” he continued. “He has already sent warning letters to 46 states and the District of Columbia, putting them on notice that the USPS now doubts its own capabilities.”

The House of Representatives this week will consider legislation that might guarantee a halt to the actions on the part of the postmaster general, including the removal of postal drop boxes, prohibitions on overtime, the disabling of automated letter sorting machines, and delivery schedules that have delayed mail nationwide.

“The House’s challenge this week will not simply be legislation to address these transparently obstructive measures by the postmaster general,” O’Rourke said. “Fixing the post office’s financial woes would be relatively easy. Convincing the United States Senate to join them in a veto-proof majority is the much larger challenge.

“In the 245-year history of the USPS, never have we seen political criticism and partisan interference on this level,” he said. “It is a service that touches every American, every business day. For the Congress to ignore the administration’s transparently partisan actions at this point would amount to a declaration that they’ve given up on the most fundamental right of a United States citizen.”

Contact: James O’Rourke, 574-339-1836, jorourke@nd.edu

Americans actively engaging in collectivism as financial buoy, experts say

2020-08-13T10:00:00-04:00

The economic effects of the coronavius in the U.S. have brought Americans’ preexisting financial precarity into stark focus. Karen Richman, University of Notre Dame director of undergraduate studies at the Institute for Latino Studies, and her colleague Joelle Saad-Lessler, associate teaching professor and associate dean of undergraduates at Stevens Institute of Technology, found that many people in the U.S. are relying on informal networks of family and friends to stay afloat in a recent study.

“Since the advent of COVID-19, the media has been reporting on surprising selfless demonstrations of mutual aid as Americans have helped one another cope with the sudden shattering of their (already) volatile financial situations,” Richman said. “However, there was strong evidence that collectivist exchanges of money, housing and caregiving were helping people stay afloat, even before the pandemic.”

Before the pandemic hit, declining incomes, coupled with escalating costs of housing, childcare, eldercare, higher education and healthcare, made it nearly impossible for the average American to set aside liquid savings. A 2018 Federal Reserve Bank Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households found that 40 percent of American adults did not have as much as $400 to cover an unexpected expense.

Without access to credit from banks, secure housing, childcare or accumulated retirement savings, many people in the U.S. are adopting collectivist practices. Collectivism is a moral orientation that enjoins the continuous pooling of resources and circulation of care across families, households and generations. Richman and Saad-Lessler’s previous research illuminated how, beneath the radar, many Latinos (in the U.S. and in their countries of origin) cope with their material insecurity and estrangement from formal sources of savings by practicing collectivism. They build social credit and social wealth in an informal “bank” from which they are entitled to draw in the short and long term, in emergencies and in retirement.

Collectivist systems limit, and treat as immoral, individualism and private accumulation — the same values and behaviors that define American mainstream culture and the financial industry takes as essential givens. Collectivism, which is prevalent in low-resourced, small-scale communities throughout the world, appears to be increasingly common in American society for two primary, interrelated reasons: demographic change involving the growth of minority and immigrant populations (including Latinos), and the spread of economic insecurity to white demographics.

To measure collectivism in relation to formal savings across all U.S. demographics in research Richman and Saad-Lessler are currently conducting, they are using the U.S. Census Bureau's Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). With approximately 30,000 respondents, it is one of the largest and most informative national panel surveys available. They created a means of measuring Americans’ collectivism by assigning “collectivism scores” — their uses of this informal bank — in comparison to their participation in the formal savings system.

Indicators of collectivism in the SIPP include evidence of financial support and in-kind assistance with housing and caregiving that extend beyond the nuclear family to other households and generations. They found that the higher a person’s collectivism score (or their embeddedness in informal networks of exchange), the lower their retirement savings and the higher a person’s formal savings for retirement (or their ability to be financially independent), the lower their involvement in collectivist reciprocity. Reliance on these exchanges changes during the life course. Younger people rely on collective support for up to 21 percent of their income. As people age, collective support shrinks in importance relative to other sources of income reaching a low of 3 percent among the elderly. Unfortunately, only one-tenth of American seniors report receiving support from their network and those who do have increased levels of material security and wellbeing.

Probing the exchange behavior of the 10 percent of seniors who do receive help from their networks reveals the positive effects of interdependence on their retirement security. Compared to those who are not involved in collectivist networks, they are more financially secure and they have better health status, too. Seniors who do not rely on these networks have higher income from retirement pensions and other sources, indicating that those who do not expect to receive help from their collective network save more in anticipation of being on their own. Nonetheless, in the SIPP sample, total incomes are higher for those receiving collective help among the poorest elderly ($11,460 versus $7,496 for the lowest income quartile and $18,771 versus $17,521 for the second income quartile), while among the upper 50 percent, total income is higher among those not receiving help. In other words, collective support is a safety net that makes 50 percent of the elderly population better off than their peers who do not receive collective support and keeps them out of poverty.

For those approaching retirement who are between the ages of 50 and 61, Social Security is their most valuable asset, which highlights the crucial contribution Social Security makes in funding most American workers’ retirement. The next biggest component of pre-retirees’ savings, according to Richman and Saad-Lessler’s analysis of the SIPP data, is not formal savings, but rather, their informal, collective assets, which comprise 12-18 percent of total savings. Taking into account the value of Social Security assets, only 86 percent of pre-retirees without collective assets meet or exceed their savings target. However, that figure jumps to 94 percent for Americans with collective assets. In other words, collective assets help more Americans achieve their savings targets and afford their retirement years.

“The causes of our economic insecurity need urgently to be addressed and reversed. At the same time, policymakers and stakeholders should recognize the benefits of collectivism and adopt policies that reward collectivist practices,” Saad-Lessler said. “Such policies might offer income or Social Security credits to those who provide caregiving and housing support, for example. Our institutions need to shift away from policies that assume individual financial and material independence toward those that more realistically align with the informal collectivist practices of ordinary Americans.”

Ken and Susan Meyer endow Notre Dame’s Business on the Frontlines initiative

2020-08-12T10:00:00-04:00

Since 2008, University of Notre Dame Master of Business Administration (MBA) students have collaborated with international humanitarian groups, multinational corporations and other organizations through the innovative Business on the Frontlines course to provide sustainable business solutions to today’s most pressing challenges.

Led by Viva Bartkus, associate professor of management at Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, students and faculty have worked on more than 50 projects in 30 countries through a three-pronged approach that combines business practices, academia and faith. Students engage in rigorous cross-disciplinary study and data-driven problem-solving that they then apply to real-world issues.

Thanks to a $15 million gift from Ken and Susan Meyer that will name and endow this signature program, Mendoza will be able to expand the program’s global and domestic reach and increase the number of MBA students who participate each year.

“Ken and Susan have been longtime and extraordinarily generous supporters of Notre Dame in many ways,” Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., Notre Dame’s president said. “We are deeply appreciative of a gift to enhance MBA courses that are among the most innovative in the country, and that reflect the mission of Notre Dame.”

Martijn Cremers, the Martin J. Gillen Dean of the Mendoza College of Business, added: “The Notre Dame MBA aims to educate business leaders who contribute to human flourishing by serving others, who cooperate with all stakeholders in solidarity, especially with those with the greatest needs, and who compete with excellence, both externally in the marketplace and internally toward the best version of themselves. The Meyer Business on the Frontlines Program is exemplary in how it integrates and delivers on all of these goals. I could not be more grateful to Ken Meyer for his friendship toward the University, and especially for this gift, which will transform the lives of our MBA students, Meyer Frontlines partners and everyone they serve for generations to come.”

Now in its 13^th year, Business on the Frontlines sends students across the globe — from Colombia to Cambodia, Egypt to Ethiopia and Bosnia to Bolivia. Many of the projects have focused on agriculture, infrastructure and mining — economic sectors that in the wake of conflict often can absorb large numbers of unskilled workers. The students also have tackled issues such as unemployment, health and sanitation and human trafficking.

Through the Meyer Business on the Frontlines Program, Mendoza aims to offer this opportunity to about 100-plus MBA students annually, and improve the lives of thousands of people around the world.

“We are truly fortunate to have such incredible support from the Meyer family. For over a decade, through the Business on the Frontlines program, MBA students served partners on their toughest challenges in societies ravaged by conflict and deep poverty — thanks to the support of generous benefactors in the Notre Dame family,” Bartkus said. “This incredibly generous gift will ensure that even more students will continue on this journey of discovery as they put their business skills into action to serve vulnerable communities around the world and here in the U.S. for many years to come.”

A 1966 Notre Dame graduate, Meyer has played a pivotal role in helping the college attract world-class MBA applicants to Notre Dame. In 2010, he established the Kenneth R. Meyer Fellowships, creating an elite cohort of MBA students recruited each year from the top 3 percent of all MBA applicants worldwide. As the program embarks on its second decade, it has supported more than 70 MBA students.

“Our world order is particularly vulnerable right now, mid-year 2020,” Ken Meyer said. “The pandemic’s impact has been particularly harsh on the less fortunate among us worldwide. The Meyer Business on the Frontlines Program will provide our students an opportunity to confront these issues first hand, work directly with the people impacted, and provide practical, affordable business solutions. What a wonderful opportunity for all of us to actually improve less fortunate peoples’ lives!”

The Meyers’ previous philanthropy to Notre Dame includes the Kenneth R. Meyer Professor of Global Investment Management (a position currently held by former Mendoza Dean Roger Huang) and the Robert and Ardelle Meyer Scholarship, named in honor of his parents. Since the scholarship’s establishment in 1992, it has supported more than 74 undergraduate students.

Meyer retired as chairman and CEO of Lincoln Capital Management Company in 2004. He founded the firm’s fixed income management organization in 1981 and negotiated the sale of the company in June of 2004. Previously, Meyer worked for the Harris Bank from 1968 to 1981. He managed the institutional fixed income business and was serving as senior vice president responsible for all institutional asset management by the time of his departure.

Meyer has served as the director of LINK Unlimited, a minority education program in Chicago and on the Finance Council of the Archdiocese of Chicago. He is a director of the Homestead Mutual Fund Family as well as Golden Paws Assistance Dogs in Naples, Florida. A member of the CFA Society of Chicago and a Chartered Financial Analyst, he was awarded the Hortense Freidman Award for lifetime achievement in the industry in 2006.

Meyer earned his MBA from the Wharton School of Finance in 1968 and has served as a key member of the Mendoza Business Advisory Council.