The Academic Council at the University of Notre Dame has approved a change to the University calendar that will make the day before Thanksgiving a part of the Thanksgiving holiday recess for students beginning next fall.

The change was approved Dec. 12 on the recommendation of a committee that was commissioned to study academic calendar issues. The day will remain a regular work day for University employees.

In order to maintain the required number of 70 class days in the fall semester, the number of reading days at the end of the semester will be reduced by one, meaning that the last classes of the term will be on a Thursday instead of a Wednesday.

The Provosts Academic Calendar Committee determined by a variety of measures that possibly as many as half of the Universitys undergraduates do not attend classes on the day before Thanksgiving anyway, and many faculty members feel pressured to cancel classes by students who want to get an early start on travel to often-distant locations during the most difficult travel day of the year.

The Academic Council noted that some adjustments may be required to accommodate laboratory requirements and other circumstances unique to specific parts of the University, but it concluded that the balance of the arguments favored the change.

TopicID: 25866

WASHINGTON – To the secretary of state, he is a towering historical figure who nevertheless possesses a deeply personal, deeply spiritual touch.

To a former U.S. senator, he is a man who always has been called on to do the hard jobs for his country on issues fraught withguilt, fear, emotion and racismand who always managed tobring reason to the fore.

To a much younger priest in the Congregation ofHoly Cross, he is the giant who, after a lengthy conversation covering many of the episodes of his astonishingly accomplished life, knelt down before the younger man, his religious superior, and asked his blessing.

Amid the majesty of the Great Hall in the Smithsonian Institutions Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture, an audience of more than 250 family members, friends and comrades in battles for civil rights and a host of other causes paid tribute Tuesday night to Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., the University of Notre Dames president from 1952 to 1987.

The event featured the inclusion of a photograph of Father Hesburgh into the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery. The image, by an unidentified photographer, captures Father Hesburgh and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. linking hands in solidarity during a civil rights rally at Soldier Field in Chicago in 1964. Work in support of civil rights, marked most prominently by his service on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, was among the many major national and international issues in which Father Hesburgh was involved.

The guest list included numerous current and former members of Congress, including the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, as well as many Notre Dame trustees, advisory council members and friends of the University.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who received her masters degree from Notre Dame in 1975, spoke at a reception before the formal dinner about her association with Father Hesburgh. It began, she said, when she was 14 or 15 years old and Father Hesburgh came with other members of the civil rights commission to the University of Denver at the invitation of Rices father, who was teaching a course there on the black experience in America.

Father Hesburgh spoke there about the greatwoundin American life that was racism, and about thehealingthat was taking place then through the civil rights movement and the enactment of civil rights legislation.

Rice said Father Hesburgh and her father, John W. Rice, becamegood friendsas a result of that encounter – good enough that her father felt comfortable sending her to Notre Dame for graduate schoolbecause he knew (she) would be under the watchful eye of Father Ted.

She recalled two letters that she had received over the years from Father Hesburgh. In one of them, on the occasion of her fathers death, Father Hesburgh offered the assurance that her father was even then in heaven. In the second, much more recently, he wished her well in the difficult tasks she faced as secretary of state and urged her, in moments of trial, to utter his favorite prayer:Come, Holy Spirit.

In a speech marked by great humor and deep appreciation, Alan Simpson, the lanky former senator from Wyoming, recalled his work with Father Hesburgh in 1980 on the Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy.

They never gave him any of the soft jobs to do for his country,Simpson said. Father Hesburgh always got the jobs in whichguilt, fear, emotion and racismran riot. But the priest, he said, always found a way tobring reason to the fore.

Simpson recalled a favorite Hesburgh expression about forgiveness:If you cant forgive a person, its like letting them live in your head rent-free.

Notre Dame’s current president, Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., recalled when he was religious superior of the Congregation of Holy Cross in 1997 and he met with each member of the order, including Father Hesburgh.

The two men talked at length about Hesburghs remarkable life and achievements, Father Jenkins said, and then Hesburgh knelt before him and asked the younger mans blessing. It was, Father Jenkins said, a true reflection of the mans greatness as a person and a priest.

Father Hesburgh himself responded to the adulation with an Italian expression that he translated as,It may not all be true, but it sure sounds good.

Speaking seriously, he said,When you boil it all down, each one of us has to say that God has been awfully good to us.

Among the divine gifts, he said, are intelligence, which makes us unique among Gods creatures, and family – not just of blood, but also of spirit. The room, he said, was full of peoplewho would literally die for each other.

We thank God,he said,for the grace of living in these times, times when good could be achieved and when beauty was always there if you looked hard enough for it.

TopicID: 24926

In a finding with implications for the debate over the No Child Left Behind Act, a faculty-student research team at the University of Notre Dame has concluded that test score data currently used to make comparisons among schools could be better used to diagnose strengths and weaknesses and improve performance within individual schools.

Writing in the journal Educational Researcher, the Notre Dame researchers said that the current system ofcross-sectional comparisons of different cohorts of students…mostly hold schools accountable for factors beyond their control, namely, random variations in test performance and changes in the knowledge and skills that students bring to school to begin with.

They advocatea dramatic shift in the use of cross-sectional standardized test data, from comparisons across schools, which are known to be unreliable, to potentially useful within-school analyses.

The researchers are Sean P. Kelly, assistant professor of sociology, and Laura Monczunski, a 2007 Notre Dame graduate who now is doing graduate work at Purdue University. Their findings were published in the June/July issue of Educational Researcher.

The holy grail of standardized testing isvalue-added,a clean measure of student achievement that can be attributed to the school, as opposed to the students home or other sources of learning.

Most state school accountability programs rely oncross-sectional comparisons of different cohorts of students,say Kelly and Monczunski,for example, a comparison between the test scores of one years fourth grade class and the scores of the previous years fourth graders.Such comparisons fall far short of measuring value-added, they said.

In contrast, they note, existing state test data can reliably identify important differences in subject-matter performance within schools.The use of standardized test data might have a more positive impact on classroom instruction if it is used to detect and showcase best practices within schools, rather than labeling and sanctioning schools.

_ Contact: Sean Kelly, 574-631-3166 or_ " skelly6@nd.edu ":mailto:skelly6@nd.edu

TopicID: 24506

The federal Voting Rights Act has been indispensable to the political progress of minority populations in the United States, but they still are severely underrepresented at every level of government, new research by a University of Notre Dame political scientist indicates.

Writing with three co-researchers in a journal of the American Political Science Association (APSA), Dianne M. Pinderhughes, professor of Africana studies and political science, observed that, at the congressional level,the vast majority of nonwhite House memberswere elected from districts covered by the Voting Rights Act, which was passed originally in 1965 to end discriminatory electoral practices in the South.

The law has been renewed several times, and its coverage expanded to assure access to the vote for people who speak languages other than English. Beginning in 1982, the law also protected the creation ofmajority-minoritydistricts, so that nonwhite voters would have a chance to elect candidates of their respective groups to office.

Pinderhughes and her colleagues found that of the 71 black, Latino, Asian and American Indian House members in the 109th Congress, more than 60 percent came from districts covered by one or another of the anti-discrimination provisions of the Voting Rights Act. All 25 of the Latino members came from such districts.

At both the congressional and state legislative levels, the sheer numbers of nonwhite representatives have grown substantially over the last quarter century, but in percentage terms, they remain far short of true proportionality.

Nonwhites were 31 percent of the U.S. population in 2000, but they were less than 12 percent of the members of the House of Representatives. The 891 nonwhite members of state legislatures in 2006 were only 12 percent of the total 7,382 state lawmakers.

Pinderhughesco-researchers are Pei-te Lien of the University of Utah, Carol Hardy-Fanta of the University of Massachusetts at Boston, and Christine M. Sierra of the University of New Mexico.

The voting rights article appeared in PS: Political Science and Politics, one of three journals published by APSA. The data in the article are related to a larger study on elected officials of color being conducted by the same research team.

Pinderhughes joined the Notre Dame faculty in autumn 2006 from the University of Illinois-Urbana. She currently is president-elect of APSA and will assume the presidency at the organizations 2007 annual meeting in Chicago next month.

TopicID: 23886

The rupture occurred about 12:30 p.m. to a gas line that runs just east ofMendoza. It took repair crews until just before 2 p.m. to find and shut off the valves that fed the broken section of the line.

No injuries were reported as a result of the accident.

TopicID: 23306

Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., president of the University of Notre Dame, issued the following statement about the shootings Monday (April 16) at Virginia Polytechnic Institute andStateUniversity:

We grieve along with our brothers and sisters at Virginia Tech for those who died or were injured in yesterdays horrific events. We pray for eternal rest for those who died, and pray also that Gods love and ours may give understanding and consolation to those who survived.

A memorial mass for the victims of the Virginia Tech tragedy will be offered at 10 p.m. Tuesday (April 17) at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on campus.

TopicID: 22206

The accident occurred shortly after 10 a.m. at a site just west of the Hesburgh Library and south of the Center for Social Concerns.

The Center for Social Concerns building was evacuated as a precaution. There were no injuries, and the building was reopened at 1 p.m. Repair work was completed about 2 p.m.

TopicID: 21868

The University of Notre Dame and Cathedral High 91��Ƶ have been in communication about the school’s use of Notre Dame’s “Fighting Leprechaun” logo since at least the year 2000. They last communicated about it in December 2006, when the chairman of Cathedral’s school board wrote to our general counsel, stating that it was “Cathedral’s intention to phase out the use of the fighting leprechaun logo in favor of our Celtic cross logo.”

Cathedral is one of many Catholic high schools that, over the years, have adopted the nickname Fighting Irish and used the leprechaun logo. Notre Dame does not actively seek out such schools. But when a school’s use of our trademarked symbols comes to our attention, we do notify it and ask those in authority there to find another. As our general counsel, Carol Kaesebier, said in a letter to the Cathedral High 91��Ƶ board chairman last September, “to allow others to use its trademarks as their own would dilute the University’s rights to its marks to the point where its proprietary claim could be at risk.”

In the case of Cathedral, as with many other schools, Notre Dame has suggested a number of alternatives, including that the school design a separate, distinctive leprechaun figure. The fact that the discussions between Notre Dame and Cathedral High have been going on since 2000 indicates that we have been generous in allowing the school to phase out the use of the University’s marks and adopt others.

It is not clear to us why the Cathedral case, in which the last communication was three months ago, has become news today. And the acrimony suggested by the Indianapolis Star article is not at all supported by the cordial tone in which this discussion has been conducted for the last seven years.

For more information please contact Don Wycliff at (574) 631-9006 or (574)286-1591.

TopicID: 21728

From job placement assistance for spouses of new hires to equipment for the new Jordan Hall of Science, the University of Notre Dames academic side has begun to reap the dividends from the Fighting Irish football teams appearance last January in the Fiesta Bowl.

In a letter this week to the faculty, Notre Dames president, Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., announced that he and Provost Thomas Burish had agreed on the allocation of the $11.2 million remaining after the University paid all expenses associated with the bowl appearance.

The money was divided as follows:

• Retrospective purchases for the library and other library needs – $1.5 million

• Endowing job placement services for spouses of new hires – $1 million

• Equipment for Jordan Hall – $2.7 million

• Undergraduate student need-based financial aid endowment – $2 million

• Graduate student financial aid endowment – $2 million

• Increase endowed undergraduate summer research slots by 10 – $1 million

• Architecture graduate student aid – $500,000

• Master of business administration student aid – $500,000

While most athletic programs are subsidized by the universitys operating budget, our athletic department provides significant resources for the academy every year, even when the team does not participate in a bowl,Father Jenkins said in his letter to the faculty.Appearances in major bowl games provide additional revenue for academic priorities.

Father Jenkins lauded thespirit of cooperation and mutual support between our athletic department and the academyand expressed thanks toour football team and the whole athletic department, under the superb leadership of (director of athletics) Kevin White.

Over the past quarter century, revenue from bowl games (not including this years Fiesta Bowl) has given the University more than $69 million that, along with a substantial portion of the proceeds from the Universitys football contract with NBC, have provided more than 2,000 scholarships to Notre Dame students.

TopicID: 18742

The mobile units, each about the size of a small trailer, are expected to remain in place until possibly as late as October. They will be removed after Cingular and Verizon complete installation of 16 smaller and permanent transmitter/receivers.

Three of the temporary units belong to Cingular. They are located near McKenna Hall,StepanCenterand the South Dining Hall. Verizons mobile unit is at the Eck VisitorsCenter.

We specifically selected these locations to provide the best possible reception for students in the residence halls,said Gordon Wishon, associate provost, associate vice president and chief information officer.Coverage will be even better when these temporary units are replaced with the permanent distributed antenna system, which should be in place by October.

TopicID: 18523

AUniversityofNotre Dame Trusteeand her husband have pledged $100,000 toward the endowment of the Universitys new Department of Africana 91��Ƶ.

Phyllis Stone, a 1980 Notre Dame graduate, and her husband, Jim, a 1981 alumnus, made the gift, the first of its size to the Africana studies department.

Richard Pierce, department chair and associate professor of history, said that the Stonespledgerepresents a great beginning of our effortto build the program and put it on a solid footing.

Phyllis Stone said she and her husband made their donation to show their commitment to the new department and their hope that others will follow their example. Speaking of Americansknowledge ofAfrica, she said,We are so far behind where we ought to be.

Mrs. Stone is executive director of worldwide marketing for Merck&Co. Inc. ofWhitehouse Station,N.J.She was elected to Notre Dames Board of Trustees in May 1995. Earlier she was a member of the advisory council of the Mendoza College of Business and helped to create the Black Alumni of Notre Dame within the Universitys Alumni Association.

Mr. Stone was a member of the 1977 Fighting Irish national championship football team and played professional football for four years. He currently is an executive sales representative for Merial Ltd. Animal Health, a company partly owned by Merck&Co.

Established a year ago, the Department of Africana 91��Ƶ replaced the Universitys African and African-American 91��Ƶ Program. It offers an interdisciplinary curriculum in which students 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.

TopicID: 18364

I have always depended on the kindness of strangers,one of New Orleansbest-known fictional residents, Blanche DuBois, said famously in the Tennessee Williams playA Streetcar Named Desire.

Not so for one ofNew Orleansbest-known real residents, Xavier University of Louisiana. The only Catholic institution among the nations historically black colleges and universities, Xavier has taken pride in being independent and producing graduates who not only achieve, but also help build and uplift their communities.

But Hurricane Katrina knocked the pins out from under virtually everyone and everything inNew Orleans, and left even its hardiest citizens and institutions in need of help. Happily, Katrina also called forth the best instincts of generosity among the American people at large and solidarity within the community of American Catholics.

Evidence of that solidarity will become visible on the Notre Dame campus beginning June 30, when about 60 students arrive for the summer session of Xaviers Institute for Black Catholic 91��Ƶ.

Notre Dames has beenthe most exemplary experience of hospitality,says institute director Sister Jamie Phelps, O.P.

Sister Phelps has been on campus since November, living at the Fischer Graduate Residences and working from an office on the third floor of Malloy Hall.

This will be the 26 ^th summer session in the history of the institute, whose purpose isto prepare people for effective ministry in the black Catholic community.It doesthat, Sister Phelps says, by giving theman interdisciplinary theological educationthat takes specific account of African-American culture and the experience that created it.

The institute offers a program that leads to a masters degree in theology, as well as several certificate and continuing education programs. More than 1,000 people have participated in institute programs since they started in 1980.

A Chicagoan by upbringing and the first American black woman to join the Adrian Dominican congregation, Sister Phelps is the institutes sole full-time faculty member. She has been associated with the institute since its beginning, first as a consultant, later as a faculty member and, since 2003, as director.

The rest of the faculty are adjuncts, experts in theology, sociology, music and other fields relevant to the ecclesial experience of African-Americans in this country and in the Catholic Church in America.

Sister Phelps, who earned her doctorate in theology at the Catholic University of America, estimates that as many as 100 people related to the institute programs will be on campus at some point between now and the end of classes on July 22.

How the Xavier program came to be on the Notre Dame campus this summer is a study in the meaning of solidarity. Even asNew Orleansand Xavier were still inundated, administrators from Notre Dame began calling to offer help.

Don Pope-Davis, associate vice president for graduate studies; John Cavadini, chair of the theology department; and Jean Ann Linney, vice president and associate provost, were just some of the names Sister Phelps mentioned.

By late October, when he led a seven-member Notre Dame group on a visit to devastated New Orleans, Notre Dame President Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., was able to announce that Notre Dame and Xavier had agreed on a plan to hold this summers session of the Institute for Black Catholic 91��Ƶ at Notre Dame. The leadership of Norman Francis, Xaviers president and the recipient this year of a rare second Notre Dame honorary degree, was crucial in making the agreement possible.

It then fell to Sister Phelps to make the deal real. That is what she has beenworking at these past eight months from office in Malloy Hall.

This years contingent of nearly 60 students is down from the typical 72, she said, but not drastically. She feels good about this 26 ^th summer of the institute.

Those associated with Notre Dame, she says, ought to be proud of the Universitysspirit of hospitality and efforts to help those in need, in the spirit of social justice.

* Contact: * _Sister Jamie Phelps, 574-631-5366
_

TopicID: 18123

The University of Notre Dame will not enter into an agreement with the South Bend Railway to deliver coal to its power plant, John Affleck-Graves, the Universitys executive vice president, said Tuesday (June 21).

Now and for the foreseeable future,Affleck-Graves said,the University will have its coal delivered by trucks,as it has for at least the last half-dozen years.

Affleck-Graves said he concluded he needed to make anunequivocalstatement of the Universitys intent because of rampant speculation in the community that Notre Dame had agreed privately with the railway owners to reactivate the train tracks on the west side ofSouth Bendto transport coal to campus.

There has been no such agreement and nothing that could even be callednegotiations,he said.

He said he spoke with South Bend Mayor Steve Luecke about six months ago and assured him that, while the University mightexploreany proposal that the railroads backers might make, Notre Dame would not go forward with coal-hauling by rail if the city strongly opposed it.

Affleck-Graves said thatas diligent, conscientious stewards of the University and its resources,he and his staff are obliged to listen to any proposalthat offers the prospect of greater efficiency and economy.

However, he said, Notre Dame has forged astrong working relationshipwithSouth Bendand the rest ofSt. JosephCountyover the past two decades, and thatrelationship was more valuable than any gain a coal-hauling deal might bring.

The University will not always agree with the city on difficult issues like this, Affleck-Graves said, but it always will make decisions recognizing that its relationships with surrounding communities areassetsas important and valuable as any other assets it possesses.

Notre Dame uses an estimated 80,000 tons of coal annually to produce electrical power and hot water for the campus.

TopicID: 18022

The following statement is from Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., president of theUniversityofNotre Dame, in regard to the Campus Labor Action Projects call for aliving wagefor University employees.

Over the last school year, University administrators have met with representatives of the Campus Labor Action Project no fewer than five times. For the most part, these have been amicable, productive meetings. I have entrusted responsibility for this issue toJohnAffleck-Graves, the executive vice president of the University, and Robert McQuade, our associate vice president for human resources. I am confident of their skill, their good faith and their concern for the well-being of our employees and the University as a whole.At Notre Dame, we value the contributions of every member of our staff, who help make this University the special place it is.And we are committed to paying fair and just wages and benefits to our workers, as a matter of justice and of fidelity to Catholic social teaching.p. _ Contact: Don Wycliff, associate vice president for news and information, 574-631-8696 or wycliff.1@nd.edu
_

TopicID: 17342

A new committee on gender relations and violence against women, a new student-produced play, and a new set of guidelines on sponsorship of campus speakers and events were unveiled Wednesday (April 5) by University of Notre Dame President Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., as thesubstantive resultsof a debate he started two months ago on academic freedom and Notre Dames Catholic character.

Delivering what he called hisclosing statementon the debate, Father Jenkins wrote in a 2,000-word document that he seesno reason to prohibit performances of ‘The Vagina Monologueson campusand that he does notintend to do so.

[I] am very determined that we not suppress speech on this campus,Father Jenkins said.I am also determined that we never suppress or neglect the Gospel that helped inspire this university. As long as the Gospel message and the Catholic intellectual tradition are present, we can welcome any serious debate on any thoughtful position here at Notre Dame.

Despite Father Jenkinsforceful assertion of respect and support for academic freedom, it had been feared by some within the Notre Dame community and some without that he planned to ban performances of the feminist stage play on campus. Similar fears had been voiced on behalf of a film festival focusing on gay and lesbian themes.

Both events were held on the Notre Dame campus during the 10 weeks of debate and discussion that followed the presidents speeches in late January to faculty, studentsand alumni in which he raised the question whether they wereinstances of events which appear to imply endorsement of views that are in conflict with fundamental values of Notre Dame as a Catholic university.

The Queer Film Festival was renamed"Gay and Lesbian Film: Filmmakers, Narratives and Spectatorships."The Vagina Monologues,which in prior years was an occasion for fundraising on behalf of womens aid organizations, was performed in a large classroom and was followed by panel discussions on the play and its significance to women and its relationship to Catholic thinking and teaching on sexuality.

It was the post-performance panels that made the difference for Father Jenkins.

I still believeas I said in my address to the facultythat [the plays] portrayals of sexuality ‘stand apart from, and indeed in opposition tothe Catholic tradition on human sexuality,he wrote. But the panel discussions brought the play intoconstructive dialoguewith that tradition, he said, so thatour students were engaged and informed.

This is a good model for the future,said Father Jenkins, who is in his first year as Notre Dames 17th president.

While the campus debate focused onThe Vagina Monologues,Father Jenkins emphasized that his concern was with the larger issues of academic freedom and Notre Dames character as a Catholic university.

The challenge is not to do just one of theseor even to do both of them in parallelbut to promote academic freedom and affirm our Catholic character in a way that integrates the two and elevates both. This University was founded on the premise that these goals are compatible and can be mutually reinforcing.

Some of the people he heard from over the last 10 weeks wereadamantly opposedto any campus performance or expression that contradicts Catholic teaching, Father Jenkins said.To them, we must say, with all respect: ‘This is a Catholic university.

On the other side were those who wereappalled that we would raise any question about the content, message or implications of a work of art, drama or literature here on campus. To them, we have to say, with the same respect: ‘This is a Catholic university. **

Father Jenkins said that a Catholic universityprovides a place for the Catholic tradition to share the wisdom it possesses with all academic disciplines, while providing that tradition an opportunity to be enriched through the encounter with new perspectives and discoveries.

As to thesubstantive resultsof the campus debate, Father Jenkins said the student leaders who supportedThe Vagina Monologueshave proposed to produce a playwritten in student voices and describing their own experiences.TitledLoyal Daughters,the play is to be an entirely student-produced effortin consultation with the faculty advisorsthey choose.

I will do all I can to support this effort,he said.

Additionally, Father Jenkins said he has created an ad hoc committee of students, faculty and administrators to fostera wide-ranging discussion of gender relations, sexuality, and ways to prevent violence against women.The president said he will chair this committee, which he said wouldhelp enrich our discussion of issues critical to the lives of women here at Notre Dame and beyond.

Father Jenkins said he had reached a written understanding with departmental chairpersons on standards for sponsorship of speakers and events. The agreement is to be presented to the universitys Academic Council for consideration and possible adoption.

The full text of Father Jenkinsclosing statement is available on the Web at

TopicID: 16762