Scott Merrill named 2016 Richard H. Driehaus Prize Laureate
Eusebio Leal Spengler to receive the Henry Hope Reed Award
Scott Merrill, an architect known for his originality and creative application of architectural precedents, has been named the recipient of the 2016 Richard H. Driehaus Prize at the University of Notre Dame. Merrill, the 14th Driehaus Prize laureate, will be awarded the $200,000 prize and a bronze miniature of the Choregic Monument of Lysikrates during a ceremony on March 19 (Saturday) in Chicago.
In conjunction with the Driehaus Prize, Eusebio Leal Spengler, city historian of Havana, Cuba, will receive the $50,000 Henry Hope Reed Award, given annually to an individual working outside the practice of architecture who has supported the cultivation of the traditional city, its architecture and art.
“Scott Merrill has demonstrated how the principles of classicism can be used as a foundation for designing buildings that respond to and express regional character while employing the richness of precedents found throughout the ages, including our own,” said Michael Lykoudis, Driehaus Prize jury chair and Francis and Kathleen Rooney Dean of Notre Dame’s School of Architecture. “His applications of architectural forms from various times and places to modern settings are used to reinforce the values of community, beauty and sustainability without sacrificing economy.”
The chapel was designed by 2016 Driehaus laureate Scott Merrill.
Seaside Chapel, view of the precinct from the south. The chapel was designed by 2016 Driehaus laureate Scott Merrill.
Merrill’s extensive knowledge of vernacular and classical traditions in architecture form the base of his imaginative buildings that are built on a human scale and imbued with originality as well as beauty. His designs span from single-family houses to master plans and include an impressive variety of building types such as a federal courthouse, apartment buildings, town halls, an equestrian center and an acclaimed chapel in Seaside, Florida.
After graduating from the University of Virginia, Merrill went on to receive a master of architecture degree from Yale University. He is the founder and principal designer of Merrill, Pastor & Colgan Architects in Vero Beach, Florida. The firm, known for its integration of building type and site planning, has designed projects in varied locales including England, Haiti, New Zealand, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Scotland and the United Arab Emirates as well as throughout the United States, Canada and the Caribbean.
“The jury’s selection of Scott Merrill as the 2016 Driehaus Prize laureate brings into focus his remarkable ability to apply the principles of traditional architecture to a wide variety of building types while integrating unique regional identities,” said Richard H. Driehaus, founder, chairman and chief investment officer of Chicago-based Driehaus Capital Management LLC. “His work beautifully demonstrates the inherent versatility of traditional architecture.”
The Richard H. Driehaus Prize at the University of Notre Dame was established in 2003 to honor lifetime contributions to traditional, classical and sustainable architecture and urbanism in the modern world. The prize is awarded annually to a living architect whose work has had positive cultural, environmental and artistic impact in keeping with the highest ideals of classical architecture in contemporary society.
The award ceremony on March 19 will also honor the Henry Hope Reed Award laureate, Eusebio Leal Spengler, whose innovative leadership saved the historic center of Old Havana. Leal transformed the Office of the Historian from a conventional cultural agency to a financially autonomous model of management that not only generates the funds needed to undertake complex restoration projects but also provides support for the local community.
“I applaud the selection of Dr. Leal as the recipient of the 2016 Henry Hope Reed Award,” said Driehaus. “His tireless and strategic efforts to protect the cultural heritage of the Cuban people are an inspiration to all of us with a passion for historic preservation. His work has ensured that Havana will be a source of inspiration for all of us in perpetuity.”
Leal is the Havana City Historian as well as the director of the restoration program of Old Havana and its historic center, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Additionally, he serves as deputy to the National Assembly in Cuba, as president of the Commission of Monuments in the City of Havana and as a United Nations goodwill ambassador. Leal is a specialist in archaeological sciences and received a master’s degree in Latin American, Caribbean and Cuban studies from the University of Havana as well as a doctorate in historical sciences.
“Eusebio Leal’s work in Havana has not only helped save what is one of the most stunningly beautiful cities in the world, and in particular the western hemisphere, but also by example, it has highlighted the importance of an architectural and urban culture that maintains a spirit of conservation and investment as opposed to consumption and waste,” said Lykoudis.
Recipients of this year’s Driehaus Prize and Reed Award were selected by a jury composed of Adele Chatfield-Taylor, president emerita of the American Academy in Rome; Robert Davis, developer and founder of Seaside, Florida; Paul Goldberger, contributing editor at Vanity Fair; Léon Krier, architect and urban planner; Demetri Porphyrios, principal of Porphyrios Associates; and Witold Rybczynski, Meyerson Professor Emeritus of Urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania.
For more information about the Driehaus Prize, visit DriehausPrize.org.
Contact: Mary Beth Zachariades, School of Architecture, 574-631-5720, mb.zachariades@nd.edu
Can performance brands cause a placebo effect?
From the middle-school child considering the premier brands of soccer shoes, to the college graduate weighing which graduate test prep course to take, a common marketing message from consumer brands is “you will perform better with us.”
In a new study, Frank Germann, of the Department of Marketing in the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, and colleagues Aaron Garvey of the University of Kentucky and Lisa Bolton of Penn State University examine if such performance brands can cause a placebo effect.
“Superior materials, craftsmanship, design or other components of the product can certainly help performance in some cases,” Germann said. “However, in our research, we hold the product constant and instead examine whether the mere belief that a particular brand is effective at enhancing performance can actually improve performance objectively.”
The researchers conducted several experiments to determine if there is a placebo effect. In one study, they invited participants to take part in a market research study about a new golf putter.
“Specifically, we asked the participants to complete putts on a putting green from three predefined locations with the new prototype putter,” Germann said. “Moreover, about half of the participants were told that they would be putting with a Nike putter, a strong performance brand, whereas the other half of participants were not told what putter brand they would be using. Importantly, all participants used the exact same putter.”
In another study, the researchers invited participants to take part in a math test.
“The participants were also told that they would be wearing a pair of foam ear plugs during the math test to minimize distractions and improve concentration,” Germann said. “Each participant again received the exact same ear plugs; however, about half of the participants were told that the ear plugs were made by 3M, a strong performance brand, whereas the other half did not know who made the ear plugs.”
Although all participants used the same golf putter, those who thought that it was a Nike golf putter on average needed significantly fewer putts to sink the golf ball. Likewise, although every participant used the same ear plugs, those who thought that the ear plugs were made by 3M got significantly more questions right.
“Our results indicate that strong performance brands can cause an effect that is akin to a placebo effect,” Germann said. “Our results also suggest that the use of a strong performance brand causes participants to feel better about themselves when undertaking a task — that is, to have greater task-specific self-esteem. This higher self-esteem lowers their performance anxiety which, in turn, leads to the better performance outcomes."
The researchers found that not everyone benefits equally from the performance brand placebo. The effect is strongest among people who are novices in the respective task, such as golf putting or math tests, whereas experts receive little or no boost.
“People who are inexperienced have more self-doubts and performance anxiety that the brand helps to alleviate, whereas experts already have high task-specific self-esteem and low performance anxiety when undertaking the task,” Germann said.
The researchers also found that simply being prestigious is not enough for a brand to elicit a placebo effect.
“The brand needs to be perceived as capable of improving performance in a given task,” Germann said. “For example, we found that participants who were told that they we going to putt with a Gucci putter, a prestigious brand but not a performance brand, did not do better than those who did not know about the brand of the putter, while those using the Nike putter performed better than both groups.”
Germann said that the results indicate that performance brands can improve consumers’ athletic as well as cognitive performance. The results also suggest brand managers should emphasize the performance characteristics of their brands and position their brands on relevant performance dimensions.
“Ironically, our studies also indicate that consumers do not typically credit the brand with the performance gain, but rather themselves,” Germann said. “This finding provides an interesting paradox for brand managers who would likely desire some of the credit for the benefit their brands provide to consumers.”
The study will appear in the Journal of Consumer Research. It can be found here: http://jcr.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2015/12/28/jcr.ucv094.
Contact: Frank Germann, 574-631-4858, fgermann@nd.edu
Immigration expert: United States v. Texas case could limit executive power
On Tuesday (Jan. 19), the U.S. Supreme Court announced its intention to decide the fate of President Barack Obama’s immigration reform plan before the 2016 presidential election. The president’s plan to allow millions of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. to apply for programs that could allow them to extend their stay has received notable partisan backlash. The case, known as United States v. Texas, has also raised the issue of the legailty of the president’s executive actions. Luis Fraga, professor of Transformative Latino Leadership and co-director of the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame and an expert on the politics of immigration, Latinos and American politics, says reform is necessary, but could limit executive power.
“Because one of the central issues is about the limits to executive authority, it is likely that the Court will split between the four most conservative Republicans and the four most liberal justices. That again places Justice Anthony Kennedy, who most often votes with the conservative group, but on occasion does not, in the position of being the person who will decide national policy.
“The primary issue to the Obama administration is how it can legally maneuver around a Republican wall of opponents to immigration reform in both the House and the Senate. It is the members who constitute this wall who prevent any vote being taken on legislation to reform our immigration system. There is considerable bipartisan consensus that some type of reform is necessary. Given the Republican leadership’s unwillingness to allow a vote, the president used his executive authority to provide temporary protection from deportation to undocumented parents with children who are U.S. citizens by birth. This would provide this special protected status to an estimated 5 million parents of U.S. citizen children.
“The risk the Obama administration takes in appealing the case to the Supreme Court is that it might support the decisions of the lower courts to limit the president’s authority. If that were to happen, this would be a significant limitation on the president’s executive power with implications for other areas of public policy.”
Contact: Luis Fraga, 574-631-4742, luis.fraga@nd.edu
Mark McKenna appeals to Supreme Court in Apple v. Samsung dispute
Mark P. McKenna, professor of law and associate dean for faculty development in the University of Notre Dame Law School, is among the leaders of a group of 37 law professors who filed a friend-of-the-court brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the Apple v. Samsung case, in which Samsung has appealed its patent loss to Apple in a lower federal circuit court dispute over the copying of iPhone technology.
The petition, which was drafted by McKenna; Mark Lemley, professor of law at Stanford University; Kathy Strandburg, professor of law at New York University; and Rebecca Tushnet, professor of law at Georgetown, argues in favor of Samsung’s position that design patent rights should be limited to cover non-functional and ornamental aspects of a product.
“Our brief makes two essential arguments,” McKenna said. “First, that design patents are not supposed to be issued for designs that are functional, but the Federal Circuit has eviscerated the functionality doctrine, potentially allowing patents on designs with many functional characteristics. That stands in stark contrast to the strict functionality doctrine the Court has adopted in trademark law, even though many of the same features are claimed in design patents and as trade dress, as Apple did here.
“Second, that the damages rule applied in the case — which gives Apple the entire value of the Samsung devices when even a small part infringes a design patent — makes no sense in a world of multi-component products.
“We think the Court needs to take this case to address both of these issues, because the Federal Circuit has not dealt with them adequately.”
McKenna teaches and writes in the area of intellectual property. A leading scholar in the trademark area, he has published numerous articles in leading law journals on the topic of trademark law as well as on design patent, copyright law, the right of publicity and the intersection of intellectual property rights regimes.
Contact: Mark McKenna, 574-631-9258, markmckenna@nd.edu
Thomson Reuters names 4 Notre Dame faculty among the top 1 percent of highly cited scholars
Each year the list includes more than 3,000 scientists around the
world who have published the highest number of articles that are cited
the most frequently by other researchers. It is compiled from two
separate Thomson Reuters studies that have been analyzed for publication
and citation data from 22 subject fields of study, ranging from
chemistry to social sciences.
Hochwald, the Frank M. Freimann Professor of Electrical Engineering,
joined the University faculty in 2011. He is a Fellow of the Institute
of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and has served as editor on several industry journals.
With 44 patents and 97 publications in the field of wireless
communications, Hochwald has experienced and led the practice of
wireless communications from a variety of angles in his roles at the
Department of Defense, as a distinguished member of the technical staff
at Bell Laboratories and as vice president of Systems Engineering at
Beceem Communications. He has invented technologies and published
research articles that are the mainstays of communication theory and
practice, including differential multiple-antenna methods, linear
dispersion codes and multi-user precoding methods. He is currently
working on wideband radio-frequency circuits and antennas,
fifth-generation (5G) cellular technologies and methods to reduce human
exposure to electromagnetic radiation from portable wireless devices.
Another expert in the field of wireless communications and Fellow of the IEEE,
Laneman is the author of more than 120 publications and inventor on six
patents. His work addresses system design and prototyping of
technologies, such as multihop and cooperative relaying, dynamic
spectrum access and physical-layer security. Among his other honors are a
Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, a
National Science Foundation CAREER Award and an Oak Ridge Associated Universities Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Award.
Connecting a multidisciplinary team of Notre Dame faculty with
leading industrial collaborators, Laneman is the founding director of
the Wireless Institute in the
College of Engineering. He also serves as a professor in the Department
of Electrical Engineering and is a Fellow of the John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology and Values. He joined the University in 2002.
Beers serves as the Notre Dame Chair in Astrophysics and associate director of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics — Center for Evolution of the Elements, an NSF
Physics Frontier Center. Beers is the recipient of the Humboldt Senior
Research Award and has authored more than 380 peer-reviewed
publications. His research, which stretches across many dimensions of
astrophysics and the origin of the elements in the universe, is
currently focused on the Milky Way, specifically the third extension of
the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. He and his colleagues have measured
elemental abundances for more than 600,000 stars in the galaxy, 200
times the numbers of ancient, very metal-poor stars that were previously
known. His recent work has demonstrated that a subset of the most
metal-poor stars — the carbon-enhanced metal-poor stars — have recorded
the chemical history of the elements produced by the very first
generations of stars born in the universe, a few hundred million years
after the Big Bang. Beers and his group at Notre Dame also recently
produced the first age map of the halo of the Milky Way, which provides a key to understanding its history of assembly.
Beers joined the University in 2014, following 26 years at Michigan
State University, from which he retired as University Distinguished
Professor, and three years as director of the Kitt Peak National
Observatory in Tucson, Arizona.
A leader in the field of converting solar to electricity and chemical
energy, Kamat serves as the Rev. John A. Zahm, C.S.C., Professor of
Science in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the Notre Dame Radiation Laboratory,
as well as concurrent professor in the Department of Chemical and
Biomolecular Engineering. He has published more than 450 peer-reviewed
publications, edited four books, is a contributor to 14 books and
monographs and serves as the deputy editor of the Journal of Physical
Chemistry Letters. In addition to this most recent recognition from
Thomson Reuters, in 2011 Times Higher Education Group ranked him among
the top 100 chemists of the previous decade based on citations per
paper. The h-index measure of his research impact surpassed 114 this
year, a distinction achieved by only the world’s most elite scientists.
He also is a Fellow of the American Chemical Society (ACS),
American Association for the Advancement of Science and the
Electrochemical Society. His honors include the Chemical Research
Society of India Medal, Honda-Fujishima Lectureship Award from the
Japanese Photochemistry Association and ACS’s Langmuir Leadership Award.
The goal of Kamat’s research is to build bridges between physical
chemistry and material science in order to improve energy conversion
efficiencies. His most recent work focuses on nanotechnology and
material chemistry, solar energy conversion, chemical processes in
heterogeneous media and solar fuels. He joined the Notre Dame faculty in
1983.
Cited by Thomson Reuters for his work in economics and business,
GĂłmez-Mejia serves as the Ray and Milann Siegfried Professor of
Management. Publishing more than 200 articles in the most prestigious
management journals, he is ranked one of the most highly cited scholars
and one of the 12 most published authors in the “big eight” management
journals out of approximately 20,000 Academy of Management members. He
has also written and edited more than 15 books in various management
areas, including his areas of expertise — international management,
family business, strategic management and executive compensation. A
member of the Hall of Fame of the Academy of Management, GĂłmez-Mejia has
received numerous awards for his research and was elected as a member
of the Board of Governors of the Academy of Management, as well as
three-term president of the Iberoamerican Academy of Management, which
covers Spain, Portugal, all of Latin America, and Hispanic faculty in
U.S. universities. He has also served as president of the
Personnel/Human Resources Division of the Academy of Management.
GĂłmez-Mejia came to the University in 2013 from his position as the
Benton Cocanaugher Chair in Business at Texas A&M University. Prior
to that he served as a faculty member at Arizona State University, where
he was a Council of 100 Distinguished Scholar, a Regents Professor and
Arizona Heritage Chair holder.
More information about the methodology behind the list is available at Thomson Reuters.
Contact: Nina Welding, College of Engineering, 574-631-4397, nwelding@nd.edu
School choice programs lead to private school revenue gains
Private school voucher programs are becoming more common, with more than a million U.S. families participating in these programs across the country. These programs are designed to provide more options for students and their parents — the option of attending the school of the student’s choice.
But as these vouchers gain popularity and the financial implications become more complicated, one question remains: Does the money spent by these programs ultimately go to poor families, wealthy families whose children would have attended private schools anyway, or to the schools’ bottom lines?
A new National Bureau of Economic Research working paper, “Where Does Voucher Funding Go? How Large-Scale Subsidy Programs Affect Private-School Revenue, Enrollment, and Prices,” authored by Daniel Hungerman, associate professor of economics at the University of Notre Dame, and graduate student Kevin Rinz, provides the first study of how school choice programs affect the finances of private schools and the affordability of a private education.
The study, funded by the John Templeton Foundation, used a largely overlooked set of data — nonprofit tax returns filed by private schools. Combining this data with information on school laws, Hungerman and Rinz conducted a statistical analysis.
The bottom line? School choice programs raise a lot of money for schools. In fact, in the states studied in the NBER working paper, which studied approximately 20 percent of all U.S. private school enrollment, hundreds of millions of dollars were raised through the voucher programs.
“We find that subsidy programs created a large transfer of public funding to private schools, suggesting that every dollar of funding increased revenue by a dollar or more,” says Hungerman.
But the way a program is crafted matters. For example, some programs are available only for disabled or low-income students.
“Programs restricting eligibility to certain groups of students increase enrollment in private schools, but do not significantly raise the cost of private schools,” says Hungerman. “On the other hand, programs without any restrictions see no change in enrollment, and yet these private schools still increase their tuition when the voucher is introduced.”
The paper also calculates elasticities of demand and supply for private schools, and discusses welfare effects. The full study is available on the National Bureau of Economic Research site.
Contact: Daniel Hungerman, 574-631-4495, dhungerm@nd.edu
Posted In: Education, Research, and Social Science
YOUR BRAIN ON SLEEP
What’s going on in your head while you sleep? The research of Jessica Payne, associate professor and Nancy O’Neill Collegiate Chair in Psychology, shows that the non-waking hours are incredibly valuable for your day-to-day, especially for helping to commit information to memory and for problem solving. If you ever thought sleep was just downtime between one task and the next, think again.
For the full story please click HERE.
Irish Impact 2015: Social entrepreneurship and the power of impact investing Posted on October 26th, 2015
In 2013, Andi Phillips helped to lead an innovative project aimed at expanding access to early childhood education for at-risk children in Utah.
Phillips isn't a school administrator, or even a member of the teaching community. She is a vice president in the Urban Investment Group at Goldman Sachs. And the project didn't involve building new school facilities or changing education policies; instead, it took a financial approach called impact investing — a new way of funding efforts to address social problems while providing a competitive rate of return for investors. In this case, the initiative offered the one of the nation's first social impact bonds.
Phillips will serve as the keynote speaker for the Irish Impact Social Entrepreneurship Conference at the University of Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business. The talk, which is free and open to the public, will take place at 5:30 p.m. Oct. 29 in Mendoza's Jordan Auditorium. Roger Huang, Martin J. Gillen Dean of the Mendoza College, will provide opening remarks.
Irish Impact is an annual two-day conference that gathers students, alumni, social entrepreneurs and social investors from across the globe to discuss current issues and trends in social entrepreneurship. The conference is co-sponsored by the Gigot Center for Entrepreneurship at Mendoza College and the Fellow Irish Social Hub (FISH), an independent, nonprofit incubator for social entrepreneurs.
The 2015 conference will focus especially on finance-first and impact-first investing, as well as due diligence and discovering better ways to measure social impact.
Phillips leads the Goldman Sachs Social Impact Fund and manages teams with a focus on social impact bonds and economic development financing. She also developed the Access to Capital program as part of the 10,000 Small Businesses Initiative.
The Gigot Center for Entrepreneurship was founded in 1998 for the purpose of fostering innovation and infusing aspiring entrepreneurs with a sense of the possible. Through rigorous coursework, business plan competitions, extensive networking and mentorship, and hands-on learning experiences, the center provides students with the knowledge and skills vital to entrepreneurship.
For more information about the Irish Impact Social Entrepreneurship Conference, visit irishimpact.nd.edu.
CEO job anxiety strongly impacts judgment and decision-making, researchers find Posted on October 26th, 2015
Feeling anxious in your job? You may be surprised to learn that you have company in the form of CEOs. A new study by researchers Michael Mannor, Adam Wowak, Viva Bartkus and Luis Gomez-Mejia from the University of Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business finds that CEOs experience job anxiety as much or more than others, and such anxiety has powerful influences on their judgment and strategic decision-making.
Mannor and Bartkus traveled widely across the country to meet with CEOs of large firms and ask them about two of the most complex decisions they have had to make in their role. They ended up spending time with more than 100 business leaders, who led firms that averaged over 35,000 employees across a wide range of industries.
"At the end of each of our structured interviews, we then asked each leader if they could help us make two key connections," Mannor said. "First, we asked if they could connect us with the people on their decision-making teams, so that we could study their decision processes in more detail from diverse perspectives. Second, we asked if they could connect us with their spouse or close friends and family, which allowed us to get an objective perspective on each CEO's job anxiety. From this base of data, which allowed us to triangulate between the perspectives of the CEO, their team, and their close friends and family, we were able to draw new and more rigorous insights that have not been possible before in prior research."
Mannor, Wowak, Bartkus and Gomez-Mejia found that when CEOs feel more anxious and are in a tough situation, they are more likely to surround themselves with loyalists. In terms of risk taking, they found both a main effect — anxiety drives less risk — and an interaction: anxiety during tough situations leads to even lower risk taking.
"Ignoring such anxiety by assuming that top executives have things all under control is simply naĂŻve: CEOs are human and subject to the same types of fears, emotions and biases as everyone else," Mannor said.
Although the researchers were mostly interested in the question of how job anxiety influences firm strategy and strategic decision-making, they were able to gain some insights into what type of CEO struggles more with job anxiety than others.
"First of all, we were surprised to find that CEOs of large firms vary much more widely in their experience of job anxiety than we thought we would see going into this work," Mannor said. "Although none of the CEOs we met with showed the levels of anxiety that would require immediate clinical intervention, they did range from extremely low levels of anxiety to levels that would be considered quite high in any population. Society tends to lionize CEOs as unflappable captains of industry that have it all figured out, but what we found was a group of high achievers that experienced the stress of their work as much or more than anyone else.
"Executives who felt that their markets were more turbulent felt more anxiety, as did those who were leading their firms during the financial crisis of 2008," Mannor said. "However, we also found that women experienced more job anxiety than men, though they were only about 10 percent of our sample, and leaders who were rated as more humble were also viewed to be less anxious."
Mannor, Wowak, Bartkus and Gomez-Mejia found some interesting influences that job anxiety had on strategic decision-making.
"We theorized that when leaders were more anxious, they would tend to engage in more self-protective processes in an attempt to insulate themselves from scrutiny and blame," Mannor said. "We found support for our hypotheses in several ways. First, when facing tough situations, more anxious leaders tended to surround themselves with close friends and loyalists rather than others who might have been better qualified or stronger leaders. Second, we found that job anxiety also had strong influences on risk-taking. When CEOs were more anxious, they simply took fewer risks, even though smart risks have been shown to be essential to growth for organizations. This effect on risk was even stronger when the organization was struggling."
Although the researchers didn't focus specifically on solutions to the dilemma of job anxiety impacting strategic decision-making, they do suggest some strategies that could be helpful.
"For example, when a board of directors appoints a CEO, rather than assume that they will always make level-headed decisions the board might take steps to provide social support but also accountability," Mannor said. An excellent strategy for boards is to force the CEO to rigorously present multiple options to the board when considering a big strategic decision, rather than the CEO's final solution, as this might make their avoidance of smart risks more transparent.
"Another step boards might take is to regularly review the CEO's appointments of people into other top positions, to again create a culture of transparency where it would be more difficult for the CEO to surround themselves with loyalists instead of strong leaders. Finally, if you find yourself reporting to an anxious CEO, it would be helpful to keep this in mind when presenting ideas and solutions. Recognizing their tendency to engage in self-protection and avoid risks, you might find ways to draw more attention to risk mitigation in your presentation or go to greater lengths to highlight the upside potential of a proposed strategic recommendation."
"You leave Notre Dame with many great achievements and memorable moments," Notre Dame president Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., told the graduates in his charge to the Class of 2015. "One is that you will always be the class that helped us send Father Theodore Hesburgh to his final rest with God." Inviting Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades of Fort Wayne/South Bend to give a blessing to the seniors, Father Jenkins said, "I know Father Ted will join him in blessing the class of 2015 — in another way, his last class at Notre Dame."
I am honored and humbled to be receiving such a prestigious medal. I hope I’m worthy of standing next to the people who have received it before me. If it’s for me trying to get my life on the right track the way God wanted me too, then I am worthy, because I know, and God knows, that I’ve tried. I’ve prayed to see the world through God's eyes and asked that the world see God in me.
Tuition and fees to increase 3.7 percent for 2015-16
Dennis Brown
Undergraduate tuition and fees at the University of Notre Dame will increase 3.7 percent for the 2015-16 academic year to $47,929. Average room and board rates of $13,846 will bring total student charges to $61,775.
The 3.7 percentage increase in tuition and fees is the lowest at Notre Dame in 55 years.
In a letter to parents and guardians of students returning for the next academic year, Notre Dame’s president, Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., thanked them for the trust they have placed in the University to “provide students with the best possible educational experience,” adding, “we know that paying for college involves significant sacrifice for families, and we are grateful to you for making a Notre Dame education possible for your student.”
Father Jenkins also wrote of the many ways to measure the value of a Notre Dame education, including the University’s first-year to second-year retention rate of 99 percent and four-year graduation rate of 90 percent, as well as the 97 percent placement rate of graduates, all of which are among the highest in the nation.
“But perhaps the truest measure of the value and impact of a Notre Dame education can be seen in the lives of our graduates,” Father Jenkins continued. “In my travels across this great nation and in other parts of the world, it is a source of joy to encounter Notre Dame alumni making a difference in every imaginable field of endeavor. As women and men of faith committed to turning their gifts to the service of others, they give generously of themselves to their families, their communities and the Church.
“It is humbling and gratifying how often our graduates credit the education they received at Notre Dame and the people they came to know here with shaping them in profound and important ways for a lifetime. It is this sense of gratitude and connection that accounts for what is perhaps the most active, loyal and passionate alumni network in the world.
“We are grateful to you for the giving us the opportunity to learn and live with them.”
Scott Merrill, an architect known for his originality and creative application of architectural precedents, has been named the recipient of the 2016 Richard H. Driehaus Prize at the University of Notre Dame. Merrill, the 14th Driehaus Prize laureate, will be awarded the $200,000 prize and a bronze miniature of the Choregic Monument of Lysikrates during a ceremony on March 19 (Saturday) in Chicago.
The chapel was designed by 2016 Driehaus laureate Scott Merrill.
Seaside Chapel, view of the precinct from the south. The chapel was designed by 2016 Driehaus laureate Scott Merrill.
The award ceremony on March 19 will also honor the Henry Hope Reed Award laureate, Eusebio Leal Spengler, whose innovative leadership saved the historic center of Old Havana. Leal transformed the Office of the Historian from a conventional cultural agency to a financially autonomous model of management that not only generates the funds needed to undertake complex restoration projects but also provides support for the local community.
From the middle-school child considering the premier brands of soccer shoes, to the college graduate weighing which graduate test prep course to take, a common marketing message from consumer brands is “you will perform better with us.”
“Our results indicate that strong performance brands can cause an effect that is akin to a placebo effect,” Germann said. “Our results also suggest that the use of a strong performance brand causes participants to feel better about themselves when undertaking a task — that is, to have greater task-specific self-esteem. This higher self-esteem lowers their performance anxiety which, in turn, leads to the better performance outcomes."
On Tuesday (Jan. 19), the U.S. Supreme Court announced its intention to decide the fate of President Barack Obama’s immigration reform plan before the 2016 presidential election. The president’s plan to allow millions of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. to apply for programs that could allow them to extend their stay has received notable partisan backlash. The case, known as United States v. Texas, has also raised the issue of the legailty of the president’s executive actions. Luis Fraga, professor of Transformative Latino Leadership and co-director of the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame and an expert on the politics of immigration, Latinos and American politics, says reform is necessary, but could limit executive power.
Mark P. McKenna, professor of law and associate dean for faculty development in the University of Notre Dame Law School, is among the leaders of a group of 37 law professors who filed a friend-of-the-court brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the Apple v. Samsung case, in which Samsung has appealed its patent loss to Apple in a lower federal circuit court dispute over the copying of iPhone technology.
Private school voucher programs are becoming more common, with more than a million U.S. families participating in these programs across the country. These programs are designed to provide more options for students and their parents — the option of attending the school of the student’s choice.
