• The Priority: Achieve Preeminence as a Research University
• The Need: Strengthen the Center for Global Health and Infectious Disease

You can divide the world into two kinds of countries, says Professor Frank Collins, director of the Center for Global Health and Infectious Diseases. Well-developed countries like the U.S. and Japan, where less than one percent of the population dies from infectious diseases—and less-developed nations such as Haiti and much of Africa, where almost half of all mortality can be traced to infectious disease.

It’s the latter group that most interests Collins and his interdisciplinary team, whose research delves into the mysteries of human pathogens, the diseases they carry, and their effects on societies around the globe. Their efforts are paying off: the center’s Haiti Project, led by Notre Dame Inspiration Father Tom Streit, is on target to eradicate the deadly and disfiguring disease lymphatic filariasis from the island nation by 2013.

View a complete listing of campaign priorities.

• The Priority: Ensure the Libraries Can Sustain Academy Inquiry
• The Need: Deepen Print and Digital Collections

If there is one word that most definitely does not describe a library, it is static. Every day, knowledge and information change as quickly as the clock ticks off seconds. And just as fast, library materials become outdated, obsolete, incomplete—particularly in rapidly evolving disciplines such as business, engineering, and the sciences.

While intellectual treasures abound in the Hesburgh Libraries—imagine the riches of its renowned Medieval collections, the unparalleled depths of its Irish fiction collections—the library is nevertheless challenged to continue acquiring print and digital materials, as well as to create information services, that can support advanced academic inquiry across a multitude of disciplines.

View a complete listing of campaign priorities.

• The Priority: Protect the Integrity of Residential Life
• The Need: Decant and Renovate Undergraduate Dorms

When fellow Domers meet for the first time, they usually ask the same two questions: “What year did you graduate?” and “Where did you live?” Dorm life is elemental to the Notre Dame undergraduate experience. It always has been—ever since Holy Cross priests and faculty began residing alongside the University’s first students.

The Spirit of Notre Dame campaign will ensure that our residential traditions flourish for generations still to come, first, by seeking benefactor support for four new residence halls. The construction of new dorms will allow for the first comprehensive dorm renovation project in University history—uncrowding and refurbishing existing halls to create more common space and more desirable rooms for upperclassmen, as well as to update essential features such as bathrooms and windows.

View a complete listing of campaign priorities.