University of Notre Dame - Dome Yearbook (Notre Dame, IN)

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The University emerged from the Second World War with an already legendary football tradition, a Catholic, conservative middle class alumni an endowment of six million dollars, and at best, a mediocre academic reputation. But Notre Dame knew that to survive, it must build itself into a great university. This task fell to John J. Cava- naugh, C.S.C., who became president in the sum- mer of 1946. Father Cavanaugh realized that Notre Dame needed almost 90 million dollars worth of new buildings to accommodate its planned growth through the next decades. To this end we started. In September, 1952, Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., was named sixteenth president; his subsequent ef- fect on the university has been more far-reaching than any other person in the school ' s history with the possible exception of Knute Rockne. Father Hesburgh was determined to develop Notre Dame into a great university. He started by limiting enroll- ment, liberalizing and gradually changing student rules, and bringing better faculty members and ad- ministrators to the school. He continued the physi- cal expansion begun under Cavanaugh, constructing 65 million dollars worth of new buildings. Father Hesburgh ' s administration brought Notre Dame into the mainstream of higher education in the 1960 ' s. It organized three fund-raising drives to- taling 98 million dollars over an eight-year period something unheard of for a Catholic university. It brought in men renowned in their fields to head the colleges of the University, such as Frederick Rossini and Norman Gay. It developed new departments, new programs, and devoted more money than ever before to the graduate school. And it transferred the governing of the university from an ecclesiastical to a secular board, becoming the largest Catholic uni- versity in the world under lay control. As the University changed, the student body underwent a corresponding development. The change was not so much a physical one today ' s undergrad- uates still come primarily from white, middle-class Catholic families as an academic one. It wasn ' t un- til 1956 that Donald Sniegowski became Notre Dame ' s first Rhodes scholar. But from then on, fel- lowships began to rise in the graduating class, and graduate school started to become the rule rather than the exception. Today, Notre Dame ranks near the top of the list in Woodrow Wilson and Danforth fellowships, and well over 50 per cent of each grad- uating class goes to graduate school. Undergraduates of the sixties demanded more from the university in academics and in student life; Notre Dame re- sponded with increased facilities, better faculties, and, for the first time in its history, freedoms and responsibilities for the students. At the same time, Notre Dame became one of the major college sources of Peace Corps, VISTA, and Extension volunteers. Notre Dame has rid itself of the parochialism in its dealings with students and of its fears of a free academic inquiry which had characterized it for decades. It realizes now that a university must give students a substantial voice in governing their personal lives and that a university is a place where all the relevant questions are asked and where answers are elaborated in an atmosphere of freedom. Notre Dame is now a good university; probably even a very good university. It has recog- nized and accepted the challenge for greatness; whether or not it will meet that challenge, Notre Dame still must answer.

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And they called it the University of Notre Dame du Lac. One hundred and twenty-five years after Father Edward Sorin and six brothers of Holy Cross put up the first building of what they pretentiously called the University of Notre Dame du Lac, that university stands on the threshold of greatness. That time, short in comparison to the lifespan of the greatest universities, has witnessed the trans- formation of a fourth-rate, provincial college into a well-respected, well-known university. That Notre Dame has grown and matured in 125 years is obvious. Gone is the library which con- tained only 250,000 volumes; in its place is one of the largest college library buildings in the world. Gone is the time when academics were an exciting but unintellectual blend of Thomism and the split T ; in its place is a graduate school with 24 dif- ferent Ph.D. programs. Gone are 10 o ' clock curfews and compulsory mass attendance; in its place are the Honor Concept and student judiciary boards. Notre Dame, after a long courtship, has entered the contemporary world. Notre Dame ' s national founding could well be dated as a Saturday afternoon in the late autumn of 1913. On that day, two men Knute Rockne and Gus Dorais brought Notre Dame to national prom- inence with a new maneuver, the forward pass, in the upset victory over Army ' s football team. Rockne returned to his alma mater as head coach in 1918, and from that year until his death in a plane crash in 1931, established the charisma of Notre Dame football. Under Rockne, football be- came big business; it brought national recognition and, for the first time, a ready source of outside income. But football alone continued to characterize Notre Dame for three decades after Rockne.

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Terry Dwyer Undergraduates of the sixties demanded more from the university in academics and in student life.