One of the key priorities in our College’s strategic plan is to elevate our research culture. An important part of our research culture is getting together as a College to learn from and celebrate one another’s scholarship. Our faculty do so regularly with their colleagues in their respective departments, and in seminars where particular papers are being presented by external visitors and by our own faculty. 

I’m glad to announce a new initiative where we hope to gather faculty from across all departments at Mendoza – together with staff as well as graduate and undergraduate students – to hear from the most accomplished scholars in the College who will share an overview of their research targeted to a broad audience. 

In particular, we are launching the University Chair Public Lecture Series featuring Mendoza faculty who are designated as “University chairs” – Notre Dame’s highest recognition of the impact of a faculty member’s research. We plan to host one University Chair Public Lecture event each semester. 

Mike Crant, the Notre Dame Professor of Management & Organization and the College’s newest University chair, will present the inaugural lecture on November 28 in the Jordan Auditorium. The lecture and Q&A will take about an hour, followed by a social in our atrium. Details as to the time will be sent to you as a calendar invitation. 

For his lecture, Mike will present “My Mendoza Journey: A Memoir,” where he will reflect on his personal and professional experiences since joining Notre Dame in 1990 – his first academic job after receiving his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill earlier that year. He will present an overview of his body of research, the changes he’s observed in his field of organizational behavior and his contributions to the growth of the College and his field, all targeted to a broad audience. 

Mike researches workplace dynamics, focusing primarily on proactive personality and behavior at work. He is one of the creators of the proactive personality scale, the most frequently used measure of proactivity in the organizational literature. With nearly 23,000 citations to his research, he is one of the most highly cited scholars at Mendoza (top 5) and in the upper echelon of researchers at Notre Dame (top 30 among current faculty). His more recent work examines the frequency and impact of proactivity in Asian cultures, including exploring how proactivity helped Chinese hospitals deal with the early days of the COVID-19 crisis.

I think you will find Mike’s talk and the ones to follow to be meaningful, enjoyable and even inspiring.  I’m most grateful to Mike for his many contributions to Notre Dame, and his willingness to share his scholarship with all of us in the inaugural University Chair Public Lecture at Mendoza.

I hope that you will join us!

In Notre Dame,

Martijn