Hi everyone,

Happy New Year! I hope that 2023 has been treating you well so far and that your holiday break was largely free of blizzards, weather bombs and other forms of meteorological nastiness. I’m honored to be able to contribute this Mendoza Exchange Guest Column. The last time I contributed one of these was back in mid-July 2022, just after I had taken on a new role as the associate dean for academic programs here at Mendoza. It’s been an exciting, energizing and inspiring six months for me.

In my previous column, I mentioned that my own priorities this year are “community and efficiency.” Now that I’ve got a bit of time under my belt in this role, I’m in a better position to comment on Mendoza’s instructional engine as a whole, and what it is that these priorities are directed toward. In particular, I’d like to highlight the scope, breadth and importance of our College’s instructional activities.

All of us contribute to the College in our own specific ways, but it’s also helpful to take a step back from time to time and look at the big picture. For example, in Fall 2022 alone, 150-plus Mendoza faculty taught more than 400 separate class sessions to around 13,000 total students. These classes were taught across five undergraduate majors, seven undergraduate minors, an honors program, a dozen graduate programs and two Ph.D. programs.

With our classes being a mix of full-semester and half-semester, this works out to approximately 9,000 (!) individual class sessions, and hundreds of thousands of faculty-student interactions. If we add in all the other staff-student interactions and faculty-student interactions outside the classroom, the magnitude of what’s involved starts to become clear. 

These many, many student interactions – individually and collectively – help to guide, influence and shape students’ experiences at Notre Dame, and, subsequently, their worldviews and even core identities for years and decades after they leave campus. The Notre Dame alumni base is known as one of the most supportive and engaged in the world, and this isn’t attributable to just a few football games, a big mural and a pretty campus. It is a direct outcome of the passion and dedication of our faculty and staff.

Higher education, and especially business education, is a popular subject in the media, with commentators approaching this from a wide range of perspectives and with a wide range of agendas. One of those that I personally take most umbrage with is the contention that business education is a soulless, formulaic, transactional relationship whereby students simply turn up and exchange their or their parents’ hard-earned cash for a standardized credential.

At Mendoza, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Although I don’t have any problem with return on investment being part of the conversation (especially with some of the record career outcome data we’ve seen across our programs over the last few months), an exclusive focus on this measure completely misses the point.

There are around 4,000 degree-granting institutions of higher education in the United States, and many estimates place Notre Dame comfortably in the top 1% of these institutions. Our elite academic programs – and the individualized experiences and opportunities that characterize these programs on a day-by-day basis – lie at the heart of who we are and remain a core driver of the difference that our graduates go on to make in the world. We grow the good in business here at Mendoza in many ways, but especially through our academic programs.

It goes without saying that this wouldn’t be remotely possible without the hard work and dedication of hundreds of people in the College. Although I’m unfortunately not able to thank everyone by name, I’d like to take a moment to recognize those who I’ve been working closest with in my current role and who continue to share their wisdom and expertise with me every day.

First, though, I’ll humbly request that you consider viewing our College’s current organizational structure in a slightly different way. We often refer to the “matrix” structure here at Mendoza, visually represented by a lattice where the academic programs (e.g., MSM, MBA, MNA) are on the horizontal axis and the functions (e.g., Admissions, Careers, Student Services) are on the vertical axis, with the nodes of the lattice being the intersection of programs and functions.

Although this does partly describe our approach, I’ve come to believe that Mendoza program activities are perhaps better viewed as a “cube,” where the two-dimensional lattice becomes a three-dimensional structure (thanks to Joe Sweeney for championing this idea). This third dimension represents the departments, and especially the directors of undergraduate studies (DUSs) and department chairs, who work closely with both the academic programs and the functional teams. The chairs and DUSs are responsible for a range of critical roles, including solving the Rubik’s cube of class scheduling every semester, ensuring academic rigor and continuous curricula improvement, and serving as the primary conduit for faculty.

To that end, please let me thank the members of the “cube” who serve as leaders of the Mendoza Programs enterprise:

More generally, if you’re reading this and you’re helping to make our academic programming even stronger, thank you! Good luck with the spring semester. I look forward to being in touch again in the summer.

Sincerely,

Craig

Craig Crossland
Senior Associate Dean for Academic Programs

As this fall semester draws to a close, I know that all of us are ready for a much-needed break. The end of the semester is one of the busiest times of the year. As grades are handed in and our offices close for the year, I hope that you will have time in the coming days to relax, recharge and enjoy your families and friends.

I was glad to see how our Mendoza Atrium has become a gathering and studying space for our students, and I’m grateful for our facilities and operations team who created a beautiful environment, with the Christmas trees, the Nativity scene and the fireplace.

In a recent message, Pope Francis wrote about the Christmas tree and Nativity. The tree with its lights, he writes, “reminds us of Jesus who comes to illuminate our darkness,” and that we, like trees, need to be rooted in order to be steadfast amid difficulties, uncertainty and fear. The Christmas tree, therefore, is a symbol of being rooted in Jesus Christ.

The Nativity scene invites us to contemplate the “smallness” and humility of God who chose to be born in poverty — a proscription against the commercialism and busyness that are all too often a part of Christmas. Pope Francis reminds us,

As we gather with loved ones this Christmas, may the traditions of the tree and the Nativity — or “roots and contemplation” — help us to rediscover the joys of faith, peace and prayer.

I am so very thankful for your hard work and caring efforts on behalf of the College throughout the year. I hope you will have a wonderful break, and may we look forward to the New Year with refreshed spirits and renewed hope.

Merry Christmas and best wishes for 2023!

In Notre Dame,

Martijn