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

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Fr. Hesburgh: Well I believe it will pretty much fol- low the pattern of the past. As you know we received three years ago over three million dollars from the Ford Foundation as support for raising faculty salaries. In the past three years we have put every cent of free money into that fund and have also added to it the money we had already raised before Ford gave us the money, which was about eight hundred thousand we had raised at that time. And we have now got that fund up to about six and one-half million through appreciation of investment. I would hope that in time that fund would go up over fifteen or twenty million .dollars that it would do several things. First of all it would allow our younger professors a promise to grow and have the opportunity of growing to distinc- tion. And it would be able to bring in some people on the senior level, senior professors who would come with their own distinction of years of academic work, either as visitors or permanently, such as Mr. Mestro- vic, and I would hope also that through new programs which will be undoubtedly started at the University in the years to come that it will bring people in from different fields to enrich the University ' s program and to enrich its effect on the total civilization of our times. Acting Director, Notre Dame Foundation: Rev. John H. Wilson, C.S.C. Student Chaplain: Rev. Glen Boarman, C.S.C. 22 Bab. Father, from your background in recent years, what do you think are the most substantial benefits that a university gains from having its president in a position like yours, that is, a leader in national affairs. I suppose this is a fairly common thing in some of the other greater universities in the country in the present day. Fr. Hesburgh: There are several benefits: of course the president himself gets a lot of benefit because he is associating with some of the brightest, and most cap- able and most responsible people in the nation, and indeed, of the most capable people in the world, and some of this does rub off, hope. Also, there are many informal occasions to discuss academic programs, what makes a university great, and to get a larger mea- sure of knowledge about what should be the present- day aims of a great university. Bab. Father, we generally like to try to rate our uni- versities if you would say that, and the only criteria that seems to exist is the amount of fellowships one gets. Is there any other criteria that you would say could be used as a common denominator among uni- versities of the country or at least the larger univer- sities.

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Vice-President, Student Affairs: Rev. George Bernard, C.S.C. they might seem to be encouraging a favor or some- thing. I think if they both understood that their pur- pose in being here ... the students and the professors, that this natural contact would be a spontaneous kind of thing. Perhaps at the instigation of the student this would be most fruitful and the most to be desired. You see, this is a very unusual situation in education on a world-wide scene. We always say we don ' t have much contact, and yet every European student who comes here to study or students from the other parts of the world always says the thing that strikes him most is the friendliness and the openness and the accessibility of the professors. This simply doesn ' t happen in Europe. When I studied in Rome you saw the pro- fessor on a high pedestal; he scurried out as soon as the class was over, and no one ever talked to him. You couldn ' t even see him in his room. I think at least our professors are available, but the problem, I think, is to find fruitful ways of prolonging this contact. Scheck. Father, is there any plan to increase the size of the undergraduate school? Fr. Hesburgh: Not at present, Bill. We presently plan to stay approximately at 5,000 undergraduates and to keep the Graduate and Law School to about 1,000 which would be a ratio of about five to one. Naught. Father, a great part of the ten year program at the University is now aimed at increasing faculty salaries and attracting distinguished professors. How will this program be carried out? CONTINUED 21

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Secretary, Alumni Association: Mr. James E. Armstrong Fr. Hesburgh: Well this is a matter that has mixed in with a great deal of myth and a great deal of reality. I would imagine if you would put 15 or 20 first-rate educators in a room and ask them to make a list of the top 20 universities in the country, they would probably agree on more than 15 of them. What criteria do you use? I think the most solid criteria, of course, are your own graduates. If your graduates are compet- ing nationally with the graduates of every other uni- versity in the land and coming out creditably - - or indeed in the top ten and the top five as we have in some of these, actually at the top of some of these programs then I think you have some indication that your university is doing good work, at least at the undergraduate level. On the graduate level this is quite another thing because one here must judge the number of research grants that are given to the uni- versity. Another indication at the other end of the spectrum would be how many students who have full scholarships and can go to any university of the land pick Notre Dame. I think we would probably be among the top twelve in admitting merit scholarship winners. Stall. Considering all the sides and dimensions of the University what would you say, just personally, would be the biggest problems that Notre Dame is to face in the next two, three, or ten years. I know this re- quires a lot of thought, but I wonder what they might be. Fr. Hesburgh: Well I think the number one problem, of course, is to attract, to hold, and to reward suitably the finest faculty we can assemble. Stalt. Do you look for the Notre Dame Foundation to be of increasing help along the way? Fr. Hesburgh: Well, it must be, Neil; there ' s no ques- tion about the fact that we will probably in the next ten years for example, need at least twice the amount of money that we are bringing in through the Founda- tion today. If we didn ' t increase in anything, our ex- penditures in the next ten years would be 180 million dollars just for operations, apart from new additions to buildings and other things. Bab. Well, Father, on behalf of this group and the student body I ' d like to thank you very much for tak- ing this time to be with us, and I ' m certain that the student body through the Dome will come a great deal closer to both yourself and the problems, ideals and aspirations of Notre Dame. 23