News » Archives » September 2011
ND Expert: Al-Awlaki killing was illegal
• Date: September 30, 2011 • Categories: Academics and International
An airstrike carried out by the CIA and U.S. Joint Special Operations Command that killed radical Islamist cleric Anwar al-Awlaki today in Yemen was illegal, according to University of Notre Dame international law expert Mary Ellen O’Connell, one of the world’s leading experts on targeted killing.
A key al-Qaeda leader, al-Awlaki has been in hiding in Yemen since 2007.
“The United States is not involved in any armed conflict in Yemen, so to use military force to carry out these killings violates international law,” O’Connell says. “It is only during the intense fighting of an armed conflict that international law permits the taking of human life on a basis other than the immediate need to save life. In armed conflict, a privileged belligerent may use lethal force on the basis of ‘reasonable necessity.’ Aside from armed conflict, the relevant standard is ‘absolute necessity.’
Notre Dame ACE Academy Schools in Tucson receive scholarship boost
• Date: September 30, 2011 • Categories: Faith and Service
More than 100 at-risk children will be able to attend Notre Dame ACE Academy (NDAA) schools in the south-side Tucson community thanks to a recent contribution of $100,000 from New York Life Insurance Company through Arizona’s corporate tax credit scholarship program.
The NDAA initiative is a comprehensive school support program of the Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE), a University of Notre Dame-based movement that strengthens, sustains and transforms Catholic K-12 schools around the country.
ND Expert: Un-discussed issues in NBA lockout
• Date: September 29, 2011 • Categories: Academics
With the Nov. 1 season-opener looming, NBA owners and players meet this weekend to discuss a new labor deal in the midst of a 3-month lockout.
University of Notre Dame Finance Professor Richard Sheehan, who specializes in the economics of sports, says there are three fundamental issues to consider in terms of reaching an agreement, two of which haven’t been publicized.
“The first is the simple question of what are the real numbers?” he says. “The owners contend that the financial model currently in place is untenable and that they are losing money. I am inclined to agree that the current situation may be untenable, but without the owners providing more details about their real finances, it’s impossible to say for sure. There are so many ways to be creative in accounting and turn a profit into a loss. Certainly, that’s what the players think the owners have been doing and they don’t believe owners’ claims of losing money.”
Painting an evangelical icon
• Date: September 28, 2011 • Categories: Faith and Service
John C. Cavadini, McGrath-Cavadini Director of the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Church Life (ICL), was recently in Washington speaking to a symposium of young Catholic theologians about how to teach the faith.
The meeting, “Intellectual Tasks of the New Evangelization,” was sponsored by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), and intended to deepen and strengthen their relationship with a new generation of America’s Catholic teachers, and most of the 54 as-yet untenured theologians in attendance had received their doctoral degrees within the last five years.
Astronomy Night Oct. 3 features refurbished historic Napoleon Telescope
• Date: September 28, 2011 • Categories: Academics and Campus and Community
The Napoleon Telescope, an antique instrument freshly refurbished and housed in a modern dome atop Nieuwland Science Hall at the University of Notre Dame, will focus on the moon and maybe Jupiter during Astronomy Night Oct. 3 from 8 to 10 p.m. (later in the week in case of clouds or rain).
More modern telescopes will be set up in the North Quad and the first 300 students will receive t-shirts and donuts. Organizer Peter Garnavich, professor of physics, operated the Napoleon Telescope during a near approach of Mars in 2004.
ND Expert: The real business lesson of "Moneyball"? Keep your mouth shut
• Date: September 28, 2011 • Categories: Academics
As “Moneyball” opened in theaters last week, the media began hailing the story of Oakland A’s General Manager Billy Beane as the archetypical tale of David vs. Goliath: A baseball manager from an underfunded franchise using stats-driven financial analysis to build a winning team out of undervalued and overlooked players, essentially outwitting the moneyed clubs that could buy the biggest name talent out there.
“The fundamental point was that there were inefficiencies in evaluating players," said Richard Sheehan, finance professor at the University of Notre Dame and a member of SABR – Society for American Baseball Research – since the mid-1990s.
Community partnerships challenge ND football players to think in new ways
• Date: September 27, 2011 • Categories: Athletics and Campus and Community
As a part of a one-credit, community-based learning course offered through the University of Notre Dame’s Center for Social Concerns (CSC) over the summer, 54 Notre Dame football players spent mornings in the classroom discussing texts on ethics, and then afternoons interacting with participants of local area organizations.
“Our refugee children looked forward to these days with the players. But the appreciation was for the person, not for the name. These kids had never heard of American football or Notre Dame before,” says Esther van Stam, casework coordinator at the American Red Cross.
New study on poor financing in developing countries explains sluggish growth
• Date: September 26, 2011 • Categories: Research
Though economists have long suspected that developing countries struggle to emerge from poverty because they lack robust financial sectors, few economists have tried to determine just how this phenomenon occurs – until now.
University of Notre Dame Economics Professor Joseph Kaboski, together with colleagues from UCLA and Washington University in St. Louis, examine this phenomenon in the study “Finance and Development: A Tale of Two Sectors,” published recently in the American Economic Review.
Notre Dame to build new employee wellness center
• Date: September 26, 2011 • Categories: Campus and Community
The University of Notre Dame will break ground this fall on a new wellness center that will offer employees convenient, quality health care through an on-site medical clinic and pharmacy. To be located at the corner of Wilson Drive and Bulla Road on the northeast corner of the Notre Dame campus, the center is scheduled to open Summer of 2012.
“The health and well-being of our employees are important priorities for the University,” said Robert McQuade, vice president for human resources. “By implementing this innovative solution, we are furthering our commitment to provide the resources and benefits necessary to ensure our faculty and staff have access to quality, affordable medical care.”
Philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre honored for book’s lasting influence
• Date: September 26, 2011 • Categories: Academics
The American Political Science Association recently honored University of Notre Dame philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre for his influential 1981 book After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (University of Notre Dame Press).
MacIntyre, the Rev. John A. O’Brien Senior Research Professor of Philosophy (emeritus), received the association’s biennial Benjamin E. Lippincott Award, which recognizes “a work of exceptional quality by a living political theorist” that is still considered significant at least 15 years after its original publication.
Notre Dame research group reports terahertz technology breakthrough
• Date: September 23, 2011 • Categories: Research
A team of University of Notre Dame researchers has harnessed graphene to control the terahertz portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Researchers are increasingly interested in terahertz radiation because it offers the possibility of new technologies in communications, medical imaging and chemical detection. However, terahertz waves, which are located between the lowest energy infrared light and the highest energy radio waves, are notoriously hard to produce, detect and modulate. Modulation, which involves varying the height of the terahertz waves, is an especially important property because a modulated signal can carry information and is versatile enough for applications in fields such as chemical and biological sensing.
President of Sierra Leone to speak at Notre Dame
• Date: September 23, 2011 • Categories: Campus and Community and International
The University of Notre Dame will welcome Ernest Bai Koroma, president of the Republic of Sierra Leone, to campus Sept. 27 (Tuesday) for a lecture titled “Faith, Tolerance and Progress.”
President Koroma will speak at 4 p.m. in the Decio Mainstage Theatre of Notre Dame’s DeBartolo Performing Arts Center. A question-and-answer session and reception will follow the address. The event is free and open to the public, but tickets are required and will be available beginning today (Sept. 23) by visiting or calling the performing arts center ticket office at 574-631-2800.
Palestinian Christian peace activist to speak Sept. 29
• Date: September 23, 2011 • Categories: Campus and Community
Jean Zaru, who was born into a Quaker family in Ramallah, Palestine, was eight years old when she witnessed the Nakba (“the catastrophe”) that made 750,000 Palestinians permanent refugees during the creation of the State of Israel. Since then, she has become a leading force of nonviolent resistance against all forms of personal and structural domination.
Zaru, the author of “Occupied with Nonviolence: A Palestinian Woman Speaks,” will discuss nonviolent resistance at the 13th annual John Howard Yoder Dialogues on Nonviolence, Religion and Peace at the University of Notre Dame.
Learning and remembering linked to holding material in hands, new research shows
• Date: September 22, 2011 • Categories: Research
New research from the University of Notre Dame shows that people’s ability to learn and remember information depends on what they do with their hands while they are learning.
According to a study conducted by Notre Dame Psychology Professor James Brockmole and post-doctoral fellow Christopher Davoli, people holding objects they’re learning about process detail and notice differences among objects more effectively, while keeping the hands away from the objects help people notice similarities and consistencies among those things.
The study will be published in an upcoming issue of Memory and Cognition.
Architectural conference to address 30 years of Seaside, Fla.
• Date: September 22, 2011 • Categories: Academics
The University of Notre Dame School of Architecture will host a three-day conference titled “Seaside at 30: Lessons from the First New Urbanist Community and the Future of Traditional Town Building” Sept. 29 to Oct. 1 (Thursday to Saturday) at Bond Hall on the University’s campus.
The event is open to the public and registration is required on the conference website. There is no charge for Notre Dame students and faculty.
Notre Dame MBA ranks 4th worldwide for ethics, social impact
• Date: September 22, 2011 • Categories: Academics
The Notre Dame MBA program at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business ranked No. 4 worldwide in the Aspen Institute’s Beyond Grey Pinstripes 2010-2011 Global 100, up one slot from its No. 5 ranking earned in each of the three previous three surveys.
The biennial survey, released this week, is the only MBA ranking that measures how well business schools are preparing their students for the environmental, social and ethical complexities of modern-day business. It’s based on a rigorous, year-long review of the school’s teaching and research pertaining to business and society.
Employers seek Arts and Letters talent at “What’s Next?” Week
• Date: September 22, 2011 • Categories: Academics
“What’s Next?” That thought lurks in the back of every undergraduate mind as the years at Notre Dame fly by. To help students in the University of Notre Dame’s College of Arts and Letters explore the many and disparate ways they can answer that question, the Career Center will host its annual What’s Next?" Week Sept. 26 to 29 (Monday to Thursday).
The event, designed just for students in the College, provides information about internship, career and service opportunities available both before and after graduation.
New home of Alliance for Catholic Education is dedicated
• Date: September 21, 2011 • Categories: Academics, Campus and Community, and Faith and Service
A commitment to strengthen Catholic primary and secondary education prompted celebrations of joy and hope at the University of Notre Dame on Sept. 16 and 17 with the dedication of a new home for the Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE).
A series of events, including a blessing by University President Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., spotlighted the newly built Carole Sandner Hall as well as refurbished office and gathering spaces where ACE and the Institute for Educational Initiatives (IEI) will advance Notre Dame’s service to K-12 education.
Two biology faculty receive NIH director’s New Innovator Award
• Date: September 21, 2011 • Categories: Research
Shaun Lee and Rebecca Wingert, assistant professors in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Notre Dame, have been selected as recipients of the highly competitive National Institutes of Health (NIH) director’s New Innovator Award. Each award covers $1.5 million in research expenditures over five years.
The award, which encourages creative ideas in science, stimulates highly innovative research and supports promising new investigators. Lee and Wingert are part of a small group of only 49 exceptionally creative, early stage investigators who propose bold new approaches that have the potential to produce a major impact on a broad area of biomedical or behavioral research.
Notre Dame nanofabrication facility installing new electron-beam lithography system
• Date: September 21, 2011 • Categories: Research
The University of Notre Dame has accepted delivery of a high-end Vistec EBPG 5200 electron-beam lithography system to campus. The multi-million dollar tool, purchased from Vistec Lithography Inc., will be installed in the Notre Dame Nanofabrication Facility (NDNF) in the new Stinson-Remick Hall of Engineering. The equipment was purchased with the University’s Strategic Research Initiative funding.
Notre Dame to host conference on liberty and religion in American politics
• Date: September 21, 2011 • Categories: Academics
The question of religion and freedom in American public life will be the topic of a conference at the University of Notre Dame Sept. 29 and 30 (Thursday and Friday) at McKenna Hall on the University’s campus. The conference is free and open to the public.
Co-sponsored by Notre Dame’s Tocqueville Program and the Liberty Fund of Indianapolis, “Combining the Spirit of Religion with the Spirit of Liberty: The Tocqueville Thesis Revisited” will address Alexis de Tocqueville’s analysis of the connection between freedom and religion in American democracy, two forces thought by Europeans to be opposed.
Revealing the earliest origins of Italian language
• Date: September 20, 2011 • Categories: Academics and International
It’s a timeless project—and a priceless opportunity: Advanced students at the University of Notre Dame are currently working with some of Italy’s top linguistics experts to assemble the most complete historical dictionary of the Italian language prior to 1375.
Notre Dame is currently the only university outside of Italy invited to contribute research to the Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (TLIO) project, an initiative of the prestigious Accademia della crusca’s Opera del vocabolario italiano (OVI) branch.
Former president and first lady of the Federal Republic of Germany to speak at Notre Dame
• Date: September 20, 2011 • Categories: Campus and Community and International
The University of Notre Dame’s Nanovic Institute for European Studies and the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study (NDIAS) will welcome Dr. Horst Koehler, former president of the Federal Republic of Germany, and his wife, Mrs. Eva Luise Koehler, to the University for a three-day visit that will include a major public lecture by Dr. Koehler.
Titled “The Whole is at Stake,” the lecture will be held Sept. 28 (Wednesday) at 7 p.m. in the Carey Auditorium of the Hesburgh Library.
Rich get richer: Study shows cumulatively overpaid CEOs get the highest raises
• Date: September 19, 2011 • Categories: Academics and Research
CEOs who have been overpaid earlier in their tenures continue to receive the largest raises or smallest pay cuts, according to new research by Adam Wowak, assistant professor of management in the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business.
Lead researcher Wowak, along with Donald Hambrick and Andrew Henderson, examined the relationship between CEO pay and performance over a decade. They looked at 590 big company CEOs who had tenures of at least four years between 1996 and 2005 in their study “Do CEOs Encounter Within-Tenure Settling Up? A Multi-period Perspective on Executive Pay and Dismissal,” which appears in the current issue of the Academy of Management Journal.
"The Secret in the Wings" to be performed at Notre Dame
• Date: September 16, 2011 • Categories: Campus and Community
The University of Notre Dame’s Department of Film, Television, and Theatre (FTT) will present Mary Zimmerman’s drama “The Secret in the Wings” Sept. 30, Oct. 1, 4, 5, 6 and 7 at 7:30 p.m., with matinee performances on Oct. 1, 2, and 9 at 2:30 p.m., in the Philbin Studio Theatre of the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center.
Directed by Siiri Scott, FTT’s head of acting and directing, “The Secret in the Wings” weaves together a number of short fairy tales through different means of storytelling.
Notre Dame researchers demonstrate antibiotic sensing event central to MRSA antibiotic resistance
• Date: September 15, 2011 • Categories: Research
A new paper by a team of University of Notre Dame researchers that included Shahriar Mobashery, Jeffrey Peng, Brian Baker and their researchers Oleg Borbulevych, Malika Kumararasiri, Brian Wilson, Leticia Llarrull, Mijoon Lee, Dusan Hesek and Qicun Shi describes a unique process that is central to induction of antibiotic resistance in the problematic bacterium methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).
MRSA first emerged in the United Kingdom in 1961 and spread rapidly across the globe. Modern strains of MRSA are broadly resistant to antibiotics of various classes, but resistance to β-lactam antibiotics, which include penicillins, cephalosporins, and carpapenems, is an acute problem because it impacts virtually all commercially available members of the class.
Political scientist wins book prize
• Date: September 14, 2011 • Categories: Academics
Monika Nalepa, assistant professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame, has been named a winner of the 2011 Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association’s Comparative Democratization section for “Skeletons in the Closet: Transitional Justice in Post-Communist Europe” (Cambridge University Press).
The book examines the strategies behind decisions on whether and how to penalize members of the former authoritarian regimes in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic as they transitioned to democracy.
New book explores dark side of emerging adulthood
• Date: September 14, 2011 • Categories: Academics and Research
Young adults today enjoy more freedom, opportunities and personal growth than any previous generation. But their transition to adulthood also is more complex, disjointed and confusing than their counterparts a generation ago.
In “Lost in Transition” (Oxford University Press, 2011), University of Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith explores the difficulties today’s young people face, the underlying causes of those difficulties, and the consequences for both individuals and for society in general.
Notre Dame political scientist receives Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award
• Date: September 12, 2011 • Categories: Academics
David Campbell, John Cardinal O’Hara, C.S.C., Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, and Robert Putnam of Harvard University are the 2011 recipients of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award for their book “American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us.”
The American Political Science Association awards the prize annually to the best book from the past year on government, politics or international affairs.
Notre Dame awarded Military Friendly School title from G.I. Jobs
• Date: September 12, 2011 • Categories: Academics
The University of Notre Dame’s MBA program at the Mendoza College of Business has been named as a “2012 Military Friendly School” by G.I. Jobs, the premier magazine for military personnel transitioning into civilian life. The list honors the top 20 percent of colleges, universities and trade schools – 1,518 out of more than 8,000 surveyed – that are doing the most to embrace America’s military service members and veterans as students.
“In addition to being very pleased to assist those who have served our country so well, we have found that military service is excellent preparation for MBA study and business careers,” said Edward J. Conlon, associate dean of graduate studies at the Mendoza College.
