It’s front-page news every day. Extremist religious factions claiming innocent lives, disrupting world markets, and intensifying tensions between East and West. Students and faculty in Notre Dame’s Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies believe that quelling these battles will require a far more nuanced understanding of the difficult and millennia-old conflicts underlying contemporary violence.

That’s why the Institute is focusing, more and more, on Islamic, Christian, and other religious traditions in its scholarly examination of deadly conflict and peacebuilding. Yet these complicated academic inquiries require an equally complex, and interdisciplinary, array of library materials. With your support, the Hesburgh Libraries plan to deepen their collections in Islamic and other religious traditions collections that will significantly advance the ability of Kroc scholars to address inter-religious conflict in the modern world.

From the political and economic, to the artistic and cultural, African peoples have profoundly shaped traditions and standards on every continent. And, given that the Catholic Church is growing faster in Africa than in any other part of the world, Notre Dame has a unique obligation to advance this line of scholarship and understanding.

Established in 2005, the Department of Africana Studies offers an interdisciplinary curriculum in which undergraduates study the African-American experience; the histories, literatures, political systems, arts, economies, and religions of the African continent; and the African diaspora—the global dispersion of people of African descent.

The department’s research, teaching, and service initiatives build upon the University’s longstanding ties with countries such as Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. Campaign funding is sought to further develop these collaborations, secure outstanding faculty, and build library collections in Africana Studies.

View a complete listing of campaign priorities.

Every day, people die from diseases for which there are no known treatments or cures on the horizon, diseases that have been largely ignored by major pharmaceutical companies because the financial payoff associated with developing drugs for small populations is so slight. These are the rare and orphan diseases of the world.

Conversely, universities like Notre Dame have the freedom to investigate diseases such as Niemann-Pick Type C (NP-C), a genetic, neurodegenerative disorder that strikes just one in every 100,000 children. Notre Dame faculty are working with the Ara Parseghian Medical Research Foundation to develop and test potentially life-saving treatments for kids with NP-C. In fact, Notre Dame is one of the few universities in the nation undertaking a concerted effort to treat rare and orphan diseases. The Spirit of Notre Dame campaign will amplify their efforts by securing funding for the work of the Center for Rare and Orphan Disease Research.

Notre Dame students (and siblings) Evelyn and Everett Chu both aspire to be physicians. They’re already practicing their bedside manner by serving together on the student-run First Aid Services Team. As high school students, they knew that rigorous academic and extracurricular training would be critical to their successful medical school application. As devout Christians, they knew that Notre Dame’s emphasis on faith and service would be important for their own faith development.

And, as two of three children in the Chu family currently enrolled in college (younger sister, Eva, is across the street at Saint Mary’s), they knew that financial aid would be the only way to make their dreams a reality. “Of the colleges I applied to,” says Evelyn, “Notre Dame was the only one to offer a complete financial aid package.” With undergraduate scholarships being the top priority of the campaign, Notre Dame will be even better able to welcome excellent students like the Chus into its fold.

Partisanship and policy in the modern presidency. British fashion of the 1960s. Marital conflict and the link to social functioning in children. The impact of foreign aid on Ugandan democratization. The effect of teacher salaries on student achievement in public schools. The non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

An abbreviated listing of recent doctoral dissertations? No. Rather, these are just a handful of the topics investigated by Notre Dame undergraduates during the past year through the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP), which connects students who have a sophisticated idea for an independent research project with the funds to fuel their passion. Allowing more students to reap the benefits of active, hands-on learning is a key goal of the College of Arts and Letters—making UROP funding one of the most pressing priorities of the campaign.

China is, and will increasingly be, a major competitor, supplier, partner, and customer base for the global economy. As such, students who want to gain a competitive edge in business must understand the strategic significance of China. In recent years, the Mendoza College of Business has begun offering MBA students the opportunity to enroll in an immersion program that will assist them in doing this very thing.

While studying in China for two weeks, Notre Dame students receive tutelage in the nation’s economic, political, and market characteristics, come to understand Chinese business practices through field visits and cultural exchanges, and acquire basic Chinese language skills. The cost per student is approximately $2,500, but the experience is invaluable. Spirit of Notre Dame thus seeks to build an endowment that will provide tuition subsidies for all interested students.

The advent in 2004 of the DeBartolo Center for the Performing Arts signaled a rebirth of the arts at Notre Dame—and presented the opportunity to pursue multiple new initiatives in the sacred arts through the Spirit of Notre Dame campaign. Such initiatives are a natural fit for the nation’s premier Catholic university. Two new curricular programs have already been approved a Master of Sacred Music (MSM) program and an interdisciplinary minor in liturgical music ministry.

Administered jointly by the departments of theology and music, these programs are unique among their peers in providing students not only with technical knowledge, but also with the theological underpinnings necessary for a full appreciation of music as ministry. The MSM degree will prepare students for full-time employment in Catholic parishes and schools, as well as for other Church-related positions, while the undergraduate minor is intended for students wishing to play a role in the liturgical life of their parish as learned amateurs.

When Father Hesburgh founded the Institute for Church Life (ICL) 30 years ago, he did so with one goal in mind: to systematically deploy the resources of the University in service to the Church. He imagined the ICL as a vehicle for linking the functions and people of Notre Dame to churchgoers and church leaders: from the parishioner who longs for a better homily or more instructive catechesis for her children, to the parish priest who needs training for his lay leaders, to the bishop who seeks to re-energize his pastoral leadership.

Today, the ICL operates a full menu of outreach programming—like Echo, the Faith Formation Leadership Program, which trains new grads to minister in parishes throughout the nation as apprentice catechetical leaders. Or STEP, the Satellite Theological Education Program, a distance-learning program that provides theological instruction for clergy and lay people in remote locations around the world.

This year, nearly 200,000 people will fracture their hips in the United States—a common injury among older Americans that typically refers to a break in the femur, the largest bone in the human body. Traditional surgical repairs of the fracture are invasive, require extensive rehabilitation, and all too often end in death or permanent impairment.

Faculty and students in the College of Engineering, working in partnership with engineers from Zimmer, Inc., the world’s largest orthopedics manufacturer, are in the process of developing an entirely new, minimally invasive procedure with the potential to dramatically improve recovery times and patient outcomes for hip fractures. In the hope of replicating this kind of success story over and over again, Spirit of Notre Dame has prioritized funding for the bioengineering activities now making their mark at the University.

Mark Noll turned down offers from several Ivy League schools before coming to Notre Dame as the Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History. A noted religious and cultural historian, Professor Noll is the first person to whom the New York Times turns for a quote on the evangelical mind. This year, he received the prestigious National Humanities Medal during an Oval Office ceremony hosted by President George Bush and First Lady Laura Bush. His preeminence in the field is undisputed.

It is not mere coincidence that as Notre Dame established endowed chairs over the past four decades, the caliber of its faculty, students, and academic programs rose dramatically. There is simply no more powerful mechanism for enhancing academic life than endowed professorships, which serve to recruit and maintain such world-class teacher-scholars as Professor Noll. Spirit of Notre Dame will help to ensure a continued preponderance of exemplary faculty by seeking support for several new endowed chairs across the University.

The true spirit of Notre Dame is nowhere better reflected than in its students—individuals like Theresa Coughlin, who graduated cum laude during the May 2007 commencement exercises. An alumna of the Honors Program, Theresa did it all at Notre Dame studied abroad, wrote a senior thesis, volunteered, even played football in the Notre Dame Stadium (her interhall flag football team, the Pangborn Phoxes, twice made it to the championship game in the Stadium).

Like all of Notre Dame’s young alums, Theresa is among the best and brightest in the nation. And again, like so many of her former classmates, she and her family depended on scholarship assistance to make her education affordable. That’s why undergraduate scholarships have taken center stage in the Spirit of Notre Dame campaign your gift can help generations of students just like Theresa study and grow under the Dome.

While some perceive graduate studies as being far removed from the daily life of the University, the truth is that the presence of high-caliber post-baccalaureate students affects Notre Dame on all fronts by strengthening graduate and doctoral programs, they help to attract other outstanding faculty and student scholars who, in turn, set the highest standards for undergraduate students to emulate.

But graduate studies are a competitive field—the top universities vie fiercely for the top students, who typically elect to attend the institution offering the most generous financial aid package. Though Notre Dame has taken important steps in the past decade to stay ahead of the curve, there is an ongoing need to find new sources of funding for graduate fellowships. Financial aid for the Graduate School is thus a foremost priority of the Spirit of Notre Dame campaign.

As the oldest Catholic law school in the nation—and one that remains deeply grounded in the intellectual and social traditions of the Church—the Notre Dame Law School attracts a high percentage of students with extensive records of involvement in social justice work. Classes such as Catholic Social Thought and Poverty Law, the offerings of the Center for Civil and Human Rights, and volunteer opportunities through the Legal Aid Clinic strengthen the student body’s orientation toward public service.

Nevertheless, law graduates are often hard-pressed to pursue the kinds of lower-paying positions in the public sector that interest them most, burdened as they are with law school debt. A priority of the Spirit of Notre Dame campaign is therefore to generate support for the loan forgiveness program, which helps to lessen student loan debt at graduation, enabling new alums to pursue a legal career in service to the greater good.

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 and the Kresge Law Library—imagine the riches of our renowned Medieval collections, the unparalleled depths of the Irish fiction collections—Notre Dame’s libraries are nevertheless challenged to continue acquiring print and digital materials, as well as to create information and access services, that can support advanced academic inquiry by students and faculty across a multitude of disciplines.

Notre Dame’s reputation for preparing high-quality future healthcare professionals is so pervasive that its graduates boast an 80 percent acceptance rate to medical and dental schools, compared to the national average of just 45 percent. One of the most significant factors governing their success is undoubtedly the exemplary guidance provided by the Center for Health Sciences Advising, home to the Department of Preprofessional Studies.

The Center offers students a spectrum of services designed to assist them in discerning a vocation and navigating the complex application process. Students are not only advised on course selection and entrance exam preparation, but are counseled on other factors which contribute to a well-rounded application—how to secure a clinical internship, for example. Ensuring the success of the 350-plus applicants serviced by the Center each year requires a tremendous amount of leadership; Spirit of Notre Dame hopes to maintain the Center’s record of excellence by endowing a named directorship of preprofessional studies.

Within the University’s respected Institute for Latino Studies is the Center for Latino Spirituality and Culture (CLSC), which seeks to advance the faith of Latinos and better align their growing presence and role in the life of the Church. “If Notre Dame is where the Church does its thinking,” says Allert Brown-Gort, associate director of the Institute, “the CLSC is where the Church should be doing its thinking about Latinos.”

While studies show a marked growth in the percentage of Latinos in the U.S. Catholic Church—from 12 percent in 1970 to some 40 percent today—there has been a simultaneous decline in the percentage of U.S. Latinos identifying themselves as Catholic. By training Latino clergy, theologians, and religious educators, the CLSC aims to prepare future church leaders to develop new and better strategies to engage its changing constituencies.

The Social Entrepreneurship Program in the Gigot Center for Entrepreneurial Studies has a double bottom line—that is, a focus on social mission as well as financial outcomes. Embodying the Catholic values of the University, the program offers support to entrepreneurs from South Bend to South Africa. Diverse educational ventures designed to assist members of the local and global communities in obtaining entrepreneurial and other business skills also provide rich internship opportunities for Notre Dame students.

The Spirit campaign seeks funding to grow existing programs—like the respected Social Venture Plan Competition—and launch new ones. Whether it is creating a sustainable model for providing a light source in developing nations, or facilitating partnerships between not-for-profits and businesses in the inner city, the Gigot Center’s Social Entrepreneurship Program is showing students how to use their intellect and their imaginations to make a difference.

Collectively, the thousands of alumni, parents, and friends who contribute to the Notre Dame Annual Fund every year have an extraordinary impact on the University. Their unrestricted gifts fund scholarships for students, keep dorms up-to-date and well-maintained, fill the libraries with books and enable access to essential electronic databases, help to bring world-class scholars, artists, and performers to campus, and much, much more.

Much as the University does, the Spirit of Notre Dame campaign will depend on gifts to the Annual Fund for its success. But it is not the size of the gift that is important. What matters most is that every alumni, parent, and friends expresses their own Notre Dame spirit by participating in the Annual Fund. Every gift matters. Make yours today.