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Each year, International Student Services & Activities (ISSA), in conjunction with other campus departments and organizations, hosts International Education Week (IEW) at the University of Notre Dame. IEW is a national event that is coordinated by the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Department of Education to celebrate and promote global exchange between the United States and other countries. This year, IEW will take place November 14 to 18 (Monday to Friday).

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Did the Catholic sex-abuse scandal benefit other faiths? New research by economist Dan Hungerman shows it did. The study by Hungerman, Stepan Family Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Notre Dame, shows a 2 million member drop in the Catholic population following the sex-abuse scandal and more than $3 billion in donations to non-Catholic faiths, with Baptist churches showing the most significant gains.

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Historian and philosopher Philip Sloan, professor emeritus in Notre Dame’s Program of Liberal Studies and biologist David Hyde, the Rev. Howard J. Kenna, C.S.C., Memorial Director of Notre Dame’s Center for Zebrafish Research, are among the scientists, religious leaders, policymakers, academics and medical patients attending a Vatican conference titled Adult Stem Cells: Science and the Future of Man and Culture.

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The College of Arts and Letters is introducing a new business economics minor for students in the College who want to pursue a liberal arts education while also developing literacy in basic business economics principles.

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Robert Sedlack, an associate professor in Notre Dame’s Department of Art, Art History and Design, recently won two American Graphic Design Awards for University-related projects. Graphic Design USA magazine honored Sedlack ’89 for his work on the Parallel Currents exhibition catalogue for the University’s Snite Museum of Art and for Words for Painting, an artist’s monograph showcasing the work of Notre Dame Assistant Professor Jason Lahr.

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Notre Dame Department of History alumna Nicole Farmer Hurd ’92 was recently featured on NBC Nightly News With Brian Williams for her efforts to help disadvantaged high school students enter the world of higher education. Hurd is the founder and executive director of the National College Advising Corps (NCAC), a program that strives to increase the number and graduation rate of low-income, underrepresented, and first-generation college students. NCAC is housed at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where Hurd also serves as a clinical assistant professor in the School of Education.

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Distinguished scholar Carlos Jáuregui joined the University of Notre Dame faculty this fall as an associate professor of Spanish in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures. A native of Bogotá, Colombia, Jáuregui is the author of several books whose scholarship encompasses colonial and transatlantic studies, cultural studies, 19th-century Latin American literature, postcolonial theory, and the cultural history of Spanish America and Brazil.

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Intersecting cultures. Family heritage. Art. Love. Money. All these themes work their way onstage in Provenance, a new play by Anne García-Romero, a Moreau Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Notre Dame’s Department of Film, Television and Theatre (FTT).

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Letras Latinas, the literary program of the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies (ILS), is partnering with the Poetry Society of America (PSA) to present “Latino/a Poetry Now,” a national tour that will showcase 15 poets in a span of two-and-a-half years. The joint initiative will open Tuesday, November 8 at Harvard University and conclude at Notre Dame Oct. 29–30, 2013.

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Examining the life and legacy of President Ronald Reagan will be the focus of a symposium and panel discussion November 11 from 10 to 11:30 a.m. at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, D.C. Part of an historic year-long celebration to commemorate President Reagan’s 100th birthday, the event is sponsored by the University of Notre Dame’s Rooney Center for the Study of American Democracy and the Ronald Reagan Foundation. It is free and open to the public.

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University of Notre Dame Assistant History Professor John Deak jokes that working in the largely neglected field of administrative and constitutional history he’s “the nerdy guy who stands in the corner at cocktail parties.” But his scholarship has recently earned serious attention in the form of a Richard Plaschka Fellowship from the Austrian Federal Ministry of Science and Research. The fellowship will allow him to spend most of the next year in Vienna, working on his first book, Power and the Politics of State in Imperial Austria, 1848-1918.

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Ancient philosophers such as Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle can offer a surprisingly fresh perspective on our modern political and cultural challenges. And at the University of Notre Dame, the Workshop on Ancient Philosophy is the forum for graduate students and faculty to study and share these insights.

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The New England Resource Center for Higher Education (NERCHE) has named Margaret Pfeil, assistant professor of ethics and moral theology at the University of Notre Dame, as a finalist for the 2011 Ernest A. Lynton Award for the Scholarship of Engagement for Early Career Faculty.

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O. Carter Snead, professor of law at the University of Notre Dame, has been appointed the W.P. and H.B. White Director of the University’s Center for Ethics and Culture (CEC) by John McGreevy, I.A. O’Shaughnessy Dean of the College of Arts and Letters. A member of the Notre Dame Law School faculty since 2005, Snead will succeed W. David Solomon, associate professor of philosophy, effective July 1.

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Is the Bard a fraud? Is someone other than William Shakespeare the true author of the some of the most revered works of English literature, as the upcoming movie Anonymous suggests? “Absolutely not,” according to University of Notre Dame Shakespeare expert Peter Holland, the McMeel Family Chair in Shakespeare Studies and Associate Dean for the Arts.

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Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., president of the University of Notre Dame, has been elected to the board of directors of the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), the non-partisan, non-profit organization that has sponsored and produced all U.S. presidential and vice presidential debates since 1988.

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They won’t hear a drill sergeant shouting orders. They won’t crawl in the mud. And they won’t be scaling tall walls. At this boot camp, a select group of Notre Dame students in the College of Arts and Letters will instead learn to navigate the business world, analyze corporate data, and propose solutions to key management problems. Held in Chicago during spring break each year, the four-day Arts and Letters Business Boot Camp allows liberal arts students to meet and network with employers and successful Chicago-area alumni.

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For her deft translation of Nikolay Gumilyov’s “Giraffe,” Notre Dame Associate Professor Alyssa Gillespie was recently awarded second prize in the 2011 Compass Awards, an international Russian poetry translation contest.

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Rev. Gustavo Gutiérrez, O.P., the John Cardinal O’Hara Professor of Theology at Notre Dame and a Kellogg Institute Faculty Fellow, is known around the world as the founder of liberation theology. Among the many people he inspired is Paul Farmer, a medical anthropologist, physician, chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and a founding director of Partners in Health. Their dialogue, “Re-imagining Accompaniment: Global Health and Liberation Theology,” will take place on Monday, October 24 at 7 p.m. in Room 101 of DeBartolo Hall. Part of the Discussions on Development series, the event is free and open to the public.

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In recognition of her collaboration with a local community center, Marisel Moreno, assistant professor in Notre Dame’s Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, has been named the 2011 recipient of the Governor’s Award for Service Learning. The annual service awards, Indiana’s most prestigious honor for volunteer work, recognize individuals and organizations for “contributions of time and talent to the betterment of their communities.”

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At 6 p.m. on the eve of the feast day of Saints Peter and Paul, Pope Benedict XVI picked up his iPad and, with Thaddeus “TJ” Jones ’89 by his side, revolutionized Vatican media with the launch of News.va and the first Papal tweet. Jones, who majored in American Studies and Italian, is the project coordinator for News.va and worked with all of the various media sources, as well as the company that developed the portal, in order to create the site as it exists today.

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Lauren Rich, a Ph.D. candidate in Notre Dame’s Department of English, has been awarded a 2011–12 American Dissertation Fellowship from the American Association of University Women for her research on food in early 20th century British and colonial fiction. Fewer than 10 percent of the more than 900 applicants were given fellowships.

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On the final day of his latest six-week excavation season in historic Butrint, Albania, University of Notre Dame Assistant Professor David Hernández says “the face of a goddess appeared.” The four assistants who had a hand in the discovery? Suzanna Pratt, Patrick Conry, Matt Wieck, and Wesley Wood—all undergraduates in Notre Dame’s College of Arts and Letters.

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A pair of documentaries by 2011 graduates of Notre Dame’s Department of Film, Television, and Theatre are “cleaning up” on the film festival circuit.

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As a student in Notre Dame’s Department of History, Colin Rich ’11 didn’t memorize the names and dates of significant World War I battles, and he can’t recite a list of every U.S. president and vice president. What he did learn as a history and economics major in the College of Arts and Letters was far more valuable: the ability to uncover how and why things happen, to speak persuasively, to write concisely, and to synthesize an array of sources in into a cogent argument.

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Xavier Murphy, a 2011 University of Notre Dame graduate who was on campus this semester completing one course and working as an intern with the football program, died October 11 of complications from leukemia. Murphy resided in Zahm Hall at Notre Dame and earned his bachelor’s degree in political science.

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Ted Robinson began honing his craft as a kid, sitting alone in front of a television with the sound off. There, with the door closed, he would announce ball games, imitating Marv Albert, a New York Knicks and Rangers broadcaster, and Lindsey Nelson, who did Mets games and a national replay show for Notre Dame football. Today, Robinson reaches much larger audiences as a two-time Emmy award-winning broadcaster of seven Summer and Winter Olympics, Wimbledon and French Open tennis, San Francisco 49ers football, and Major League Baseball.

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In 2009 the University of Notre Dame launched the Science of Generosity, an initiative funded by a $5 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation, to support and conduct research into the origins, manifestations, and consequences of generosity. Directed by Christian Smith, the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Sociology, the initiative has awarded nearly $3 million to 13 research projects conducted by scholars around the world, and it is in the second year of conducting its own research on the causal mechanisms that encourage and inhibit generosity.

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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 it was for 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.

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University of Notre Dame theologian Celia Deane-Drummond has been chosen to lead a research team of theologians and scientists in residence at Princeton University for the 2012-13 academic year, to address questions of nature and nurture raised by the biological evolution of human beings.

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