Why the College of Arts and Letters
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.”
--Aristotle
The spirit of Notre Dame—that defining quality that makes this University more a way of life than simply an institution—is nowhere more strongly in evidence than in the College of Arts and Letters, the largest and oldest of the University’s four colleges.
Here, those qualities that distinguish Notre Dame from its peers—the singular combination of an undergraduate-centered liberal arts college, an ambitious research university, and an explicitly Catholic institution of international standing—are truly foundational. Guided by the principles of this triadic identity, Arts and Letters embraces a thoughtful blending of undergraduate and graduate education, teaching and research, faith and reason. As a result, students come to know the College as a place where not only their minds but their hearts grow.
Today, the College of Arts and Letters offers one of the finest liberal arts educations in the nation. Its Division of the Humanities was recently ranked twelfth among private universities, while the social sciences continue their ascent in the national rankings. Many graduate programs, such as those in Irish and Latin American studies, are at the top of their fields, and students of the arts now have more educational and professional opportunities than ever before, thanks to the completion of the Marie P. DeBartolo Center for the Performing Arts.
Each of these select achievements has a tremendous bearing on the College’s role as a cornerstone of Notre Dame’s lauded undergraduate experience. Arts and Letters boasts a first-rate undergraduate education, distinctive in its emphasis on student research, a broad array of creative academic programs, and signature interactions between students and a highly gifted faculty.
