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In 1842 the Bishop of Vincennes, Right Rev. Célestine Guynemer de la Hailandière, offered land to Father Edward Sorin of the Congregation of Holy Cross, on the condition that he build a college in two years.[1] Sorin traveled to the site with eight Holy Cross brothers and began the school using Badin's old log chapel. They immediately acquired two students and set about building additions to the campus. Notre Dame began as a primary and secondary school, but soon received its official college charter from the Indiana General Assembly on January 15, 1844.[2] Under the charter the school is officially named the University of Notre Dame du Lac, which means University of Our Lady of the Lake.[3] Although the university was originally only for male students, the female-only Saint Mary's College was founded by the Sisters of the Holy Cross near Notre Dame in 1844.[4]
More students attended the college and the first degrees were awarded in 1849.[5] Additionally, the university was expanded with new buildings allowing more students and faculty to live, study, and eat at the university.[2] With each new president, new academic programs were offered and new buildings were built to accommodate these programs. The original Main Building built by Fr. Sorin just after he arrived was replaced by a larger "Main Building" in 1865, which housed the university's administration, classrooms, and dormitories. Beginning in 1873, a library collection was started by Father Lemonnier. By 1879 it had grown to ten thousand volumes that were housed in the Main Building. This Main Building, and the library collection, was destroyed by a fire in April 1879; however, it was rebuilt before the next school year.[6] The library collection was also rebuilt and stayed housed in the new Main Building for years afterwards.[7] Around the time of the fire, a Music Hall was opened. Eventually becoming known as Washington Hall, it hosted plays and musical acts put on by the school.[8] By 1880, a science program was established at the university, and a Science Hall was built in 1883. The hall housed multiple classrooms and science labs needed for early research at the university.[9] By 1890, individual residence halls were built to house the increasing number of students.[10]
William J. Hoynes (1846–1919) was dean of the law school 1883-1919, and when its new building was opened shortly after his death it was renamed in his honor.[11]
Father John Zahm (1851–1921) became the Holy Cross Provincial for the United States (1896–1906), with overall supervision of the university, He tried to transform Notre Dame into a great university, erecting buildings and added to the campus art gallery and library, and amassing what became a famous Dante collection. His term was not renewed because of fears he had expanded Notre Dame too quickly and had run the Holy Cross order into serious debt.[11]
Notre Dame continued to grow over the years adding more colleges, programs, and even sports teams. By 1921, with the addition of the College of Commerce,[12] Notre Dame had grown from a small college to a university with five colleges and a professional law school.[13] The university continued to expand and add new residence halls and buildings with each subsequent president
Holy Cross Father John Francis O'Hara was elected vice president in 1933 and president of Notre Dame in 1934.
Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, C.S.C., (born 1917) served as president for 35 years (1952–87) of dramatic transformations. In that time the annual operating budget rose by a factor of 18 from $9.7 million to $176.6 million, and the endowment by a factor of 40 from $9 million to $350 million, and research funding by a factor of 20 from $735,000 to $15 million. Enrollment nearly doubled from 4,979 to 9,600, faculty more than doubled 389 to 950, and degrees awarded annually doubled from 1,212 to 2,500.[14]
In the mid-1960s Notre Dame and Saint Mary's College developed a co-exchange program whereby several hundred students took classes not offered at their home institution, an arrangement that added undergraduate women to a campus that already had a few women in the graduate schools. Nearly a third of accepted Notre Dame students chose not to enroll because of its single-sex status, and a 1968 poll indicated that nearly three-fourths of all Notre Dame students considered transferring to a coeducational school. After extensive debate, merging with St. Mary's was rejected, primarily because of the differential in faculty qualifications and pay scales. "In American college education," explained Rev. Charles E. Sheedy, C.S.C., Notre Dame's Dean of Arts and Letters, "certain features formerly considered advantageous and enviable are now seen as anachronistic and out of place.... In this environment of diversity, the integration of the sexes is a normal and expected aspect, replacing separatism." Reverend Thomas Blantz, C.S.C., Notre Dame's Vice President of Student Affairs, added that coeducation "opened up a whole other pool of very bright students."[15][16] Two of the male residence halls were converted for the newly admitted female students that first year,[17][18] while two others were converted for the next school year.[19][20] The first female student, a transfer from St. Mary's College, graduated in 1972 with a bachelor's degree in marketing.[16]
In 18 years under President Edward Malloy, CSC, (1987–2005), there was a rapid growth in the school's reputation, faculty, and resources. He increased the faculty by more than 500 professors; the academic quality of the student body has improved dramatically, the average SAT score rose from 1240 to 1360; the number of minority students more than doubled; the endowment grew from $350 million to more than $3 billion; the annual operating budget rose from $177 million to more than $650 million; and annual research funding improved from $15 million to more than $70 million. Notre Dame’s most recent capital campaign raised $1.1 billion, far exceeding its goal of $767 million, and is the largest in the history of Catholic higher education.[21]
Currently Notre Dame is led by Rev. John I. Jenkins, CSC, the 17th president of the university.[22] Jenkins took over the position from Rev. Edward "Monk" Malloy, CSC, on July 1, 2005.[23] In his inaugural address, Jenkins described his goals of making the university a leader in research that recognizes ethics and building the connection between faith and studies.[24]