Greetings as the 2023-2024 academic year officially gets underway!
Although we’ve had classes taking place all summer at Mendoza, today marks the official first day of class on the University calendar for this new academic year.
I hope you had a great summer and feel refreshed and renewed to start the new year. I am also very appreciative of the hard work of our staff and faculty all throughout the summer, when several of our master's programs started, while other faculty taught summer courses online and a few taught courses abroad in-person.
You may have noticed a refreshed look to Mendoza Exchange, thanks to our Communications team. The aim of this newsletter is to keep you informed about Mendoza developments, events and important initiatives in a format you can easily scan. We also want to strengthen our sense of community – celebrating personal and professional achievements together, giving each other shout-outs of appreciation for above-and-beyond efforts and providing glimpses of our lives beyond work.
Morning Brew, the new section at the bottom of the newsletter, is a throwback to when we used to send it as a separate newsletter. One of the main features, “What I’m Doing (or cooking, reading, watching and so on)” provides first-person accounts from our coworkers talking about something non-work related they are really passionate about. (Who doesn’t want to know how Andy Wendelborn earned the title of “Mister Goral”?) Please consider contributing. It’s a great way to talk about a hobby or activity, or even just a surprising thing that people might not know about you.
As the summer comes to a close, so is another project on campus that I’ve watched with some interest – the regilding of the dome. I look forward to seeing the statue of Mary in her renewed glory. Father Sorin said of the statue before it took its place atop the dome: “When this school, Our Lady’s school, grows a bit more, I shall raise her aloft so that, without asking, all men shall know why we have succeeded here.”
This is a perspective I hope we can all take into the new academic year that is in a sense “regilded” with new possibilities and high expectations: Let us raise aloft our commitment to our mission as a Catholic business school to seek “to grow the good in business to improve the human condition in an ever-changing society. Through impactful research and educational programs, we contribute to the formation of ethical business leaders who integrate the mind and the heart, and have the competence to see and the courage to act.”
In Notre Dame,
Martijn