Happy Saint Patrick’s Day and welcome back from spring break.

With the construction of the North Addition now underway, I am pleased to announce that the large auditorium on the ground floor will be named the John Francis Cardinal O’Hara, C.S.C., Auditorium. 

We chose this name to honor Cardinal O'Hara, our founding dean, who exemplifies the servant leadership qualities we aim to develop in today's students. I am most grateful to the generous benefactors who have chosen to remain anonymous and instead wanted to honor and celebrate our founding dean, the Congregation of Holy Cross, and our Catholic mission.

O'Hara's quote — "The primary function of commerce is service to mankind" — has guided the College for over a century. Beyond this quote, O'Hara's life and leadership deeply reflect the College's mission and vision. In the new addition, we plan to celebrate these connections through murals, art and other installations. 

I’d like to briefly share some of his story:

O’Hara was inspired by a global vision for business’ impact on society as a teenager when his father became an American consult and moved the family to Uruguay.  O’Hara eventually entered Notre Dame as a student in 1909, studying economics and political science, and later attended the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Finance and Commerce.

According to “O’Hara’s Heirs: Business Education at Notre Dame 1921-2021,” O’Hara joined the Notre Dame faculty in 1916 as a “serious, devout and ambitious 28-year-old.” In the post-World War I period, Americans were coming to terms with what it meant to be involved in a global conflict and its impact on political, economic and civic perspectives. O’Hara saw a great need for a school that was as focused on the students’ moral and ethical development as on their business knowledge. 

O'Hara tirelessly campaigned for Notre Dame to establish a college of commerce. His "energetic pursuits" to raise the necessary endowment included distributing pamphlets, delivering public lectures and writing scholarly articles promoting global business and business education. He also expanded the University's business curriculum and recruited new faculty. On April 20, 1921, the University established the College of Foreign and Domestic Commerce with Father O'Hara as dean, starting with nearly 400 students and 13 faculty members.

The College had its detractors. In fact, O’Hara wrote the quote we know so well in 1923 to defend against those at the University who considered business as “vocational” and not in keeping with Notre Dame’s reputation as providing a true liberal arts education.

In addressing critics, O’Hara wrote an essay containing the now-renowned words underlying Mendoza’s mission: “The primary function of commerce is service to mankind. Business has a code of ethics based very largely on divine principles. When this code is followed, commerce can and does advance civilization.”

O’Hara served as dean until 1924. He would go on to be named as vice president of Notre Dame in 1933 and then president the following year. As president, he was known for being a builder, constructing a new laundry, the post office, an infirmary and the Rockne Memorial, and the Cavanaugh, Zahm and Breen-Phillips dormitories. He also was a football fan, writing, “Notre Dame football is a spiritual service because it is played for the honor and glory of God and of his Blessed Mother.”

In 1939, O’Hara was appointed bishop of the military, serving as a military chaplain during World War II. After the war, O’Hara was appointed bishop of Buffalo, New York, then archbishop of Philadelphia before being elevated to cardinal in 1958. He died at the age of 72 on Aug. 28, 1960 and is interred in the Basilica on campus.

O’Hara is sometimes called “the unwilling cardinal” because even as he served in higher and higher offices, in his heart, he remained a humble priest who felt he served best as a “priest confessor always waiting for his penitent sons.” 

It is truly an honor to recall Father O’Hara’s legacy in the name of our new auditorium, and to renew our commitment to serving our students with his vision, relentless faith and humility in the same manner.

In Notre Dame,

Martijn

Mentorship that Grows the Good

Since 2023, I have served as the Business Honors Program's Mentor Program Manager. We have grown the program considerably since then, and we have plans for yet further development in future years. Let me take this opportunity to tell you what our mentor program is all about.

The late Clayton Christensen warned his business students against the danger of not applying their business acumen to the most important enterprise of all: themselves. “It’s quite startling that a significant fraction of the 900 students that Harvard Business School draws each year from the world’s best have given little thought to the purpose of their lives,” he wrote.[1]

Fortunately for us at Notre Dame, conversations around life's purpose and meaning — what a life well-lived really looks like; what it means to be not only an excellent professional but also a true friend, a committed spouse, and a loving parent; how to be others-focused in a “me-first” world — are all part of the fabric of our campus. This characteristic is an asset, not an obstacle, to our students' success. This Notre Dame difference drives our strategic objective to increase mentorship opportunities for our undergraduates.

Effective mentorship is crucial for professional success. Yet many struggle to find the kind of mentorship that adequately addresses their needs.[2] This might be because the scope of mentorship in the business world is often restricted to career advancement concerns alone, with little discussion of the interplay between personal and professional needs and responsibilities. As one former CEO put it, “It is possible to give a mentee good career advice that is poor life advice.”[3]

Mentorship in the Business Honors Program

Since its inception in 2021, the Business Honors Program has provided in-person, one-on-one holistic mentoring to all its students, counting on the help of exceptional graduate students, advanced undergraduates, and local alumni. This mentorship invites students to engage in conversations of purpose, offering them the space and time to consider longer-term questions, such as:

1. What is the ultimate goal of my life? Do I have a life mission? How do my career goals and desires fit into my broader life goals and desires
2. What are the foundational relationships in my life, and how am I nurturing them? What obligations do these relationships in justice require of me?
3. In what type of work could I make the best use of my gifts and talents? Do I apply my time and attention to the matters that truly reflect my highest priorities?

Mentorship in the Honors Program encourages students to consider career aspirations from the wider context of their lives as a whole, giving them a chance to articulate a personal vision for their lives and to set goals for themselves that align with that vision. This style of mentorship reflects our mission to challenge students to take seriously the call to serve others, using the intellectual, moral, and professional formation they receive to advance the common good and the integral development of society. As one honors student shares, “BHP mentorship has given me a few tools in navigating how to become a more well-rounded person, focused less on the materiality of success and more on finding my own inner purpose.”

By fostering a style of mentorship that carefully considers the global flourishing and happiness of each person, we hope our students, in turn, will themselves become the kind of mentors and advisors many workplaces so desperately need but cannot find.[4]

A New Initiative: Undergraduate Student-to-Student Mentorship

One of the ways we can challenge our students to “grow the good in business” is by offering them opportunities to support the integral development of their peers. Studies show that student-to-student mentorship programs are effective in helping incoming students (especially first-generation, international, special needs, etc.) experience a smoother transition to college life.[5] In addition to orienting them to the undergraduate experience, peer mentorship can help new students feel more “at home” in an academic setting.[6] The experience is also formative for the student mentors themselves, as mentoring fellow students requires them to practice skills and virtues such as attentive listening, patience, generosity, etc.[7]

This year, we launched several initiatives designed to create more opportunities for peer mentorship in Mendoza:

1. Adding Mentorship to Maximizing Mendoza: This past fall, the Office of Undergraduate Studies and the Business Honors Program worked together to add a peer mentorship component to the existing Maximizing Mendoza course. This course was designed to better position first-year students for both academic and career discernment. About 45 seniors from the Honors Program volunteered to mentor Maximizing Mendoza students, and more than 90% of the 120-plus students in the course opted into the mentoring opportunity. We paired the students based on data from a pre-class survey, and pairs met about once a month, subject to the mentees’ preference. A meet-and-greet ice cream social at the beginning of the semester facilitated the first point of contact. Feedback from students has been overwhelmingly positive. First-year students appreciated the perspective and candor of the seniors, especially when they had a good idea of what they wanted to study and could be paired with a senior from their major. This semester, many of the pairs continue to meet, even without the course.
2. Mentorship Training: To prepare for mentoring, BHP seniors attended a series of mentorship training sessions led by Accountancy Advisory Board Member (and BHP Mentor) Bobby Weltner (ND ’26, BBA ‘14), C.S.C. They covered topics such as how to foster greater self-awareness, self-acceptance, and self-giving; the importance of good questions[8]; how to encourage while also challenging others to grow; how to establish and maintain relationships based on trust, etc. The seniors also completed the OptimalWork Master Class, a program that coaches students and professionals to address difficulties in work and life with a growth mindset. 
3. Student-Led Discussion Groups on Human Flourishing: This semester, upperclassmen from the Honors Program are co-leading bi-weekly small group discussions with freshmen and sophomores around habits that lead to human flourishing, using the OptimalWork Master Class as a guide. These groups function autonomously: At the beginning of the semester, the group leader pairs chose a regular meeting time and place, as well as the direction of their discussions. Some groups meet over meals in the dining halls, while others meet in Mendoza.

Once a student gains clarity around the concrete direction they would like to pursue personally and professionally, they can seek out professional mentors that specifically pertain to their chosen field through existing mentoring opportunities at Notre Dame and Mendoza, including IrishCompass, the Wall Street Club, SIBC and so on. Since many students arrive unsure of their deeper motives and desires, holistic mentorship benefits all students, irrespective of their major or career plans.

Clayton Christensen worried that the “mechanism of the pursuit of achievement” would lead people to “inadvertently invest for lives of hollow unhappiness.”[9] Here at Notre Dame, we can offer our students the opportunity to avoid that trap through mentorship that is not afraid to ask the big questions. 

In Notre Dame,

Helen

Helen Keefe
Mentor Program Manager
Business Honors Program

REFERENCES

[1] Clayton Christensen, "How will you measure your life?" Harvard Business Review 88, no. 7/8 (2010): 46-51. https://hbr.org/2010/07/how-will-you-measure-your-life.

[2] Mark Horoszowski, “How to Build a Great Relationship with a Mentor”, Harvard Business Review, 21 January 2020, https://hbr.org/2020/01/how-to-build-a-great-relationship-with-a-mentor.

[3] Rick Woolworth, “Great Mentors Focus on the Whole Person, Not Just Their Career”, Harvard Business Review, 9 August 2019, https://hbr.org/2019/08/great-mentors-focus-on-the-whole-person-not-just-their-career.

[4] Horoszowski.

[5] “Peer Mentoring for Student Success”, Hanover Research, July 2022.

[6] According to a recent mental health survey of college students, “personal relationships have the most positive impact on students’ mental health.” See “National Mental Health Survey”, Hanover Research, December 2024, p.4. 

[7] Horoszowski.

[8] Alison Wood Brooks and Leslie K. John, “The Surprising Power of Questions,” Harvard Business Review, May-June 2018, https://hbr.org/2018/05/the-surprising-power-of-questions.

[9] Ibid, and How Will You Measure Your Life? Clay Christensen at TEDxBoston.

Dear Colleagues,

With the spring semester in full swing, I am excited to share some important updates and opportunities related to the College’s annual Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Grow the Good in Business™ Case Competition. This event offers Notre Dame undergraduate and graduate students a unique opportunity to tackle "wicked" business problems — complex, multi-faceted challenges often lacking easy solutions. Previous competitions have focused on issues such as health equity, financial inclusion, and the wealth gap.

Mendoza’s annual case competition is more than just an academic exercise. It offers students a chance to network with businesses actively working to build more equitable and inclusive workplaces. The competition challenges students to utilize their business acumen thoughtfully and innovatively, demonstrating their leadership, problem-solving, teamwork, and presentation skills while generating community-based research. Previous participants have found the competition a tangible way to promote the mutual advancement central to "Growing the Good in Business."  

This year's competition, focusing on child-care accessibility and affordability to provide employee flexibility and foster greater workplace equity, promises to be an engaging and impactful experience. Students will work in teams of two to four to develop and present innovative solutions to a distinguished panel of judges. Undergraduate students will compete against undergraduate students, and graduate students will compete against graduate students, for a total of $35,000 in prize money.  

In the preliminary round, students submit written business proposals reviewed by a committee of Notre Dame faculty, staff, and alumni. The committee evaluates submissions based on business rigor, creative problem-solving, strong ethical foundations, and overall professionalism. The top three undergraduate and top three graduate teams will then deliver live presentations to a panel of judges composed of corporate sponsors and University of Notre Dame leadership. After the final round, Mendoza will host a networking event connecting corporate sponsors and students.  

The success of this year’s case competition depends on the generous support of our faculty and staff. First and foremost, I encourage all faculty and staff to empower undergraduate and graduate students to participate in this powerful learning experience. Registration for the competition is open through March 8, and final round presentations are on April 11. Please consider sharing this slide about the case competition with your students or directing them to the competition's webpage. 

We also need volunteers to serve as judges and mentors to the participating teams. This is a rewarding opportunity to witness our students' talent and passion firsthand, contribute to their development as future leaders outside the classroom, and connect with the Mendoza community and our corporate partners. If you are interested in volunteering as a judge or mentor, or know of a business that may be interested in partnering with the DEI Grow the Good in Business™ Case Competition through sponsorship and participation in the networking event, please let us know using this Google form. Your time and expertise are greatly appreciated!

Finally, I want to offer my sincere gratitude to the talented case competition planning team committed to making this year’s event a success: Quin Gallagher, Carol Elliott, Paige Risser, Minhee Myung, Lara Brian, and Meghan Huff. It’s an honor to work on this important initiative with you all!

In Notre Dame,

Kristen 

Teaching Professor, Finance

Associate Dean for the Undergraduate & Specialized Master’s Programs