A Place Born of Imagination and Will

The University of Notre Dame began late on the bitterly cold afternoon of November 26, 1842, when a 28-year-old French priest, Rev. Edward Sorin, C.S.C., and seven companions, all of them members of the recently established Congregation of Holy Cross, took possession of 524 snow-covered acres that the Bishop of Vincennes had given them in the Indiana mission fields.

A man of lively imagination, Father Sorin named his fledging school in honor of Our Lady, in his native tongue, “L’Université de Notre Dame du Lac” (The University of Our Lady of the Lake). On January 15, 1844, the University was thus officially chartered by the Indiana legislature.

Father Sorin’s indomitable will was best demonstrated in 1879 when a disastrous fire destroyed the Main Building, which housed virtually the entire University. Father Sorin willed Notre Dame to rebuild and continue its growth.

"I came here as a young man and dreamed of building a great university in honor of Our Lady," he said. "But I built it too small, and she had to burn it to the ground to make the point. So, tomorrow, as soon as the bricks cool, we will rebuild it, bigger and better than ever."

Driven by Pursuit of Excellence
The Congregation of Holy Cross, epitomized by Father Sorin, has been a crucial and formative influence on the University of Notre Dame’s academic enterprises. It has expanded from small bands of students in religious formation; manual labor training; and elementary, secondary, and classical collegiate schooling, through its emergence during the 35-year tenure of Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., as a national and international center of faith, community, and learning.

Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., inaugurated in 2005, now stewards Notre Dame’s future.

In his inaugural address, he stated, “With respect and gratitude for all who embraced Notre Dame's mission in earlier times, let us rise up and embrace the mission for our time: to build a Notre Dame that is bigger and better than ever—a great Catholic university for the 21st century, one of the pre-eminent research institutions in the world, a center for learning whose intellectual and religious traditions converge to make it a healing, unifying, enlightening force for a world deeply in need. This is our goal. Let no one ever again say that we dreamed too small.”

Notre Dame is rated among the nation’s top 25 institutions of higher learning in surveys conducted by U.S. News & World Report, Princeton Review, Time, Kiplinger’s and Kaplan/Newsweek.
Notre Dame ranks first among U.S. Catholic colleges and universities in the number of undergraduates who have gone on to earn a doctorate since 1920, according to independent studies conducted by Georgetown University and the Delta Epsilon Sigma scholastic honor society.
Notre Dame is one of the few universities to rank in the top 25 in the U.S. News & World Report survey of America’s best colleges and the U.S. Sports Academy Directors’ Cup standings of the best overall athletic programs.
Notre Dame ranks fifth in a listing of “dream schools” in a survey of parents by the Princeton Review. The top seven are Stanford, Princeton, Harvard, Brown, Notre Dame, Duke, and Boston College.
Hispanic Magazine ranks Notre Dame 15th on its list of the top 25 colleges for Latinos.