Mobility, Society, and Governance in North America

Notre Dame, Indiana

Location

Notre Dame is located just north of South Bend, Ind., a city populated by 100,000 people and located 90 miles east of Chicago and 120 miles north of Indianapolis. As a Notre Dame student, you can kayak on the East Race Waterway that runs through the city, explore the shops and restaurants on Grape Road, and share your gifts with local children by tutoring at the Robinson Community Learning Center.

Whether you like the performing or visual arts, sports, music, or outdoor activities, South Bend has something for everyone. Located within driving distance from three major metropolitan areas—Chicago, Indianapolis, and Detroit—South Bend offers many of the same amenities of those larger cities within a more affordable environment.

Its small-town reputation belies the many social and cultural activities that area residents enjoy: Broadway plays and first-rate musical and performance artists at the Morris Performing Arts Center; outdoor music and arts festivals at St. Patrick's County Park; kayaking on and picnicking near the East Race Waterway, which provides a world-class kayak course; and watching the South Bend Silver Hawks, a single-A farm baseball team for the Arizona Diamondbacks, at Coveleski Stadium. All of these activities and more are available to students and families at far more reasonable prices than you would find in a larger city.

The University

The University of Notre Dame, founded in 1842 by Rev. Edward F. Sorin, C.S.C., of the Congregation of Holy Cross, is an independent, national Catholic university located in Notre Dame, Ind., adjacent to the city of South Bend and approximately 90 miles east of Chicago.

Admission to the University is highly competitive, with five applicants for each freshman class position. Seventy–one percent of incoming freshmen were in the top five percent of their high school graduating classes.

The University's minority student population has nearly tripled in the past 20 years, and women, first admitted to undergraduate studies at Notre Dame in 1972, now account for 47 percent of undergraduate and overall enrollment.

The University is organized into four colleges—Arts and Letters, Science, Engineering, and the Mendoza College of Business—the School of Architecture, the Law School, the Graduate School, six major research institutes, more than 40 centers and special programs, and the University library system.

One indicator of the quality of Notre Dame’s undergraduate programs is the success of its students in postbaccalaureate studies. The medical school acceptance rate of the University’s preprofessional studies graduates is 80 percent, almost twice the national average, and Notre Dame ranks first among Catholic universities in the number of doctorates earned by its undergraduate alumni—a record compiled over some 85 years.

The Graduate School, established in 1918, encompasses 32 master’s and 25 doctoral degree programs in and among 26 University departments and institutes.

The source of the University’s academic strength is its faculty, which since 1988 has seen the addition of some 500 members and the establishment of more than 150 new endowed professorships. Notre Dame faculty members have won 37 fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities in the past nine years, more than for any other university in the nation.

At Notre Dame, education has always been linked to values, among them living in community and volunteering in community service. Residence hall life, shared by four of five undergraduates, is both the hallmark of the Notre Dame experience and the wellspring of the University’s rich tradition. A younger tradition, the University’s Center for Social Concerns, serves as a catalyst for student volunteerism. About 80 percent of Notre Dame students engage in some form of voluntary community service during their years at the University, and at least 10 percent devote a year or more after graduation to service in the United States and around the world.

With 1,250 acres containing two lakes and 138 buildings with a total property replacement value of $2.8 billion, Notre Dame is well known for the quality of its physical plant and the beauty of its campus. The Basilica of the Sacred Heart, the 14–story Hesburgh Library with its 132–feet–high mural depicting Christ the Teacher, and the University’s beautifully renovated 128–year–old Main Building with its famed Golden Dome are among the most widely known university landmarks in the world.

Virtual Tour

Program of Study

A select number of Notre Dame students can participate for one semester in the program Mobility, Society, and Governance in North America, a consortium of six colleges and universities.  The fall semester begins in early August and runs through mid-December; the spring semester from the beginning of January until early May.  The program is open to students from Arts & Letters, Science, or Engineering at the intermediate level or better in English language. ESL courses are available if needed. 

The main objective of the MSG-NA is to create a group of young professionals and researchers endowed with a comparative and transnational vision of the processes that characterize the NAFTA region, in the hope that this vision will allow them to find innovative solutions to the challenges facing the three countries of North America.  Students in the MSG-NA Notre Dame program will benefit from the strengths at the University of Notre Dame in the functioning of U.S. Democracy, the operation of Latin American democracies, Multicultural Relations and “Latino” Studies, and economic history and regional trade integration.

The MSG-NA program focuses on four sub-topics: Border and Environmental Management, Democratic Process and Institutional Reform, Immigration, Cultural Identities, North America after NAFTA (paying particular attention to economic and social welfare).  A major part of the academic work in the MSG-NA program consists of taking 4 courses related to the four sub-topics.  Students must choose 3 out of their 5 courses from the approved course bank or must have alternative courses approved by the Project Director.  Additionally, each student will be assigned a faculty advisor that will strive to include the student in research activities and professional internships.  Students in the MSG-NA program will become a part of a virtual community with the other students participating at each of the partner institutions.  Finally, students in the program will have the opportunity to participate in an all expenses-paid summer workshop in Mexico. 

Click here for more information on this program.

Eligibility for the Program

Students from Arts & Letters, Science, or Engineering may apply.  Students must maintain a 2.5 GPA with a “B” or better in English language courses.  The application deadline is March 1, 2008 for the fall 08 semester or October 15, 2008 for the spring 09 semester. 

Additional Information

There is much more we can tell you — about this location, vibrant religious, cultural and recreational life of this community...about the student housing, transportation, health care and much, much more. It is, after all, the details that make this program so appealing. Interested? Just click here for additional information.