Congratulations to Lauren and Stephan Dolzan on the birth of their first child, Zara. Zara came into the world on Wednesday, December 22, 2021 at 8:19am, weighing 6lbs 13oz. She is a beautiful addition to the Notre Dame family. Please join me in congratulating Lauren and Stephan!
– Brandon Tabor
Thank you to all who came to the Family Room or ZOOM yesterday to hear our colleague Darlean Vance and her family share the story of her grandson Bennett. If you are interested in donating and/or sharing their story with others, the gofundme page can be found here. Thank you for embracing a member of our greater UR family!
– Brian Diss
I write today to share the bittersweet news that Kaitlin Lucero will be leaving the University of Notre Dame to pursue an opportunity at Johnson & Johnson in their Regulatory Affairs division effective April 13, 2021.
As Assistant Director of Annual Giving since 2019, Kaitlin has overseen a variety of projects spanning all areas of Annual Giving—particularly giving society and fund-level renewal solicitations. Kaitlin has been an amazing teammate for all of us and we are delighted for her as he moves on to the next chapter in her story.
God Bless and Go Irish!
Brandon Tabor
Dear UR Family,
The eighth annual Notre Dame Day returns this April 18-19, 2021! This industry-leading day of giving is our opportunity to activate the Notre Dame Family and strengthen the areas of campus that matter most to them.
On Notre Dame Day, over 800 campus causes raise money to further the work they do and a live broadcast tells amazing stories of students, professors, alumni, and friends of Notre Dame who are making an impact all over the world.
Here are a few ways you can get involved:
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out and ask! Thank you!
Katie Kerby and Brandon Tabor
Dear UR Family,
The eighth annual Notre Dame Day returns April 18-19, 2021! This industry-leading day of giving is our opportunity to activate the Notre Dame Family and strengthen the areas of campus that matter most to them.
On Notre Dame Day, over 800 campus causes raise money and compete for a share of half a million dollars in challenge funds to catapult the work they do. Additionally, a live broadcast tells amazing stories of students, professors, alumni, and friends of Notre Dame who are making an impact all over the world.
The Notre Dame Day team will follow up in the coming weeks with more information about how you can get involved.
For now, get pumped(!) and please consider sharing this story with your network.
Thank you!
– Brandon Tabor
Today our team deployed Development’s new giving.nd.edu website. This website plays host to valuable and relevant content about giving priorities, giving societies, ways to give to Notre Dame, Department contact information, and other popular content, such as information about the Football Ticket Lottery.
Furthermore, the new giving.nd.edu allows donors to make online gifts through our new online giving experience—a department-wide project three years in the making. This new online giving tool is powered by Hivebrite, a Paris-based company we’ve partnered with to build a best-in-class online giving experience. We hope you and our benefactors enjoy!
With Love,
Brandon Tabor
We’ve set up a form to submit your frequently asked questions in an effort to provide clarity to our generous donors who are seeking answers about the University’s response to COVID-19 and other happenings on campus. Stu and the UR Leadership team will investigate your question and provide a University-approved response here on the University Relations blog.
Please use this link to submit your question. We will post questions and answers below as they become available.
The following is a link to Don Bishop’s annual interview with The Observer in which he gives an overview and profile of the admitted class of 2024.
University of Notre Dame faculty members in both the College of Science and College of Engineering are working on all aspects of COVID-19 research, from diagnostic testing for infection, to vaccine identification and development, therapeutic drug development, community-wide measurements of infection, transmission modeling and mapping, and the social media and societal response to this pandemic. Each of the scholars listed below are among the top faculty researchers at the University; put another way, our best and brightest faculty have stepped up and are doing all they can to help in this time of need. Please see below for more details:
Community-Wide Measurement
Norm Dovichi (Chemistry and Biochemistry), Matt Champion (Chemistry and Biochemistry), and Kyle Bibby (Civil Engineering) are all monitoring COVID-19 in the Mishawaka regional sewage system as a community-wide measure of infection. Measuring the amounts of COVID-19 in sewage systems allows for a better understanding of disease spread within a community and also could be a predictor of outbreaks to come. The easy way to look at their work is that one test of sewage potentially shows the amount of COVID among thousands of people, versus the 1:1 testing of individuals. It could also alert a community to a possible outbreak as the COVID starts to show up in feces prior to symptom onset and subsequent hospitalization and testing.
Diagnostic Testing
Chia Chang (Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering) and his team are working on a rapid pretreatment technology that can reduce the false negative rates of COVID diagnostics, which is estimated to be as high as 30% with the current tests. Their technology isolates the viruses from the other debris in the sample that reduces the sensitivity of the detection. Their technology works fast, about 15 minutes, and it works well with any downstream diagnostic platform. The usual time for the diagnostic part is 1 hour. While the most mature technology is for sample preparation, they are also working on direct testing technology.
Drug Discovery
Shariar Mobashary (Chemistry and Biochemistry) and his team are going after everything that this virus has. The 29 genes produce both enzymes critical for the viral lifestyle as well as proteins that serve the structural functions (how the virus is assembled). The structural genes will be useful for vaccine development. Brian Baker is interested in that aspect, see below. For them, the enzymes will be targets of drug discovery.
Vaccines
Brian Baker (Chemistry and Biochemistry) is working on viral immunology and potential therapeutic SARS-CoV2 therapeutic vaccines. Right now he and his team are identifying potential sites in the various SARS-Cov2 structural proteins that are likely to elicit strong antiviral immune responses, with an emphasis on identifying those that are resistant to viral “escape” as it mutates (which it is, albeit slowly). This is currently being done computationally, and we are using our network of various collaborators to find mouse and then other non-human models to test immunogenicity.
Transmission Mapping
Alex Perkins (Biological Sciences) works on predictive modeling of disease transmission and spread, transmission dynamics and mapping. The goal of his research is to attain a predictive understanding of where and when this disease occurs, what the impact of interventions will be in curtailing its burden, and how the distribution of the disease and the response to interventions will change over time as a result of changes in its underlying drivers
Society’s Reaction to the Pandemic
Nitesh Chawla (Computer Science and Engineering) is collecting social and digital media data as it relates to society’s reaction to news and data on progression of the pandemic. Not sure where the data will take him, but he is excited to find out.
The following is a link to the letter that Erin Hoffman Harding sent on 3/31, plus below is an excerpt from that letter.
With the State of Indiana under a stay-at-home order until at least April 7, many states under similar or more stringent regulations, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommending against any large gatherings well into May, we realize and truly regret that move-out options will be less than ideal for students and families.
Within these constraints, we have worked hard to prepare options that will provide opportunity for travel planning and consideration for unique circumstances. Thank you for your patience.
Please note that teams from Student Affairs, Building Services, and Maintenance are in the process of emptying and unplugging refrigerators, securing windows, and attending to other maintenance matters to ensure student belongings remain safe until they can be retrieved.
Admissions has been communicating more extensively with admitted students online. They are sending out a weekly newsletter and have organized three informational webcasts to date (4/2/20).
Admissions will be hosting a couple of online panels and other points of contact for the gateway group.
The panel layout is to offer a Welcome from ND (Erin Camilleri. in our office) and Mike Griffin (EVP at HC) for the first ten minutes and then we’ll pivot to the students (current and previous Gateways) to share their experiences. We will then field questions for the next 30 minutes. We plan to cover :
The students were all sent invitations, so they should easily be able to register. Additionally, all of the students have already been connected with current Gateways and prospective parents have been connecting with other previous Gateway parents.
The purpose of the Student Emergency Relief Fund is to solely provide financial aid for students whose lives have been upended by this health and economic crisis. The University does not want a single student to withdraw from Notre Dame because of financial duress or to put an undue burden on their families to ensure their child graduates.
The Office of Student Accounts will be communicating with students on the prorated refunds by the end of next week (w/o 4/6). Scott Clyde shared that the refund process is not as straightforward as one would think. It is a very detailed process due to the numerous variables that need to be considered with how each student pays for these expenses — ranging from students/families paying the full bill to zero (which are easy) to everything in between (think almost but not quite full need students, study abroad unique amounts, merit awards that cover some of these costs, other outside funds that cover some, athletes, etc.).
While the NCAA passed this resolution to grant another year of eligibility for spring sport athletes, they also left the decision to pursue and implement this policy up to the individual universities/colleges. As such, Jack is using this week to work through his recommendation with Father John and will report out to our coaching staffs likely by week’s end or early next week. At that time, and based on that decision, the discussion around future costs and the impact to the scholarship bill can be analyzed.
There have been no decisions made yet as to the football season. We are proceeding as planned for now and will continue to monitor the national climate for making any changes.
The Storytelling Team continues to explore ways to effectively connect donors to campus and has worked with University partners to reach out to the Notre Dame family through the use of technology. With the postponement of ND Day, we are aware that we lost a special day to communicate all that is unique and inspirational about the Notre Dame family. Jim and his team appreciate the recommendation and plan to review this and several other options after Easter. Once plans are confirmed, we will notify the team. In the meantime, please continue to use the stories and resources contained in the Alumni Association’s weekly email update.
The following is an excerpt from Provost Burish’s letter to students on COVID-19 issues sent on March 27.
Changes to Undergraduate Student Grading for the Spring 2020 Semester. This semester undergraduate students will have the opportunity to view their final course grades at the end of the semester, and then choose whether to accept their letter grades or elect a pass/no credit option. Those receiving a letter grade of A through D can choose to receive a pass (P); those receiving an F grade can choose to receive a no credit (NC). Pass and no-credit grades will have no effect on a student’s grade point average. Undergraduates may make this choice for any or all of their courses. The Registrar will provide in the near future administrative instructions for choosing the pass/no credit option. This grading option does not apply to courses completed prior to spring break.
The status of summer session has not been confirmed as of 3/30/20. You should expect an announcement sometime in the next few weeks.
In a letter today (3/30/20) to the Class of 2020, University of Notre Dame President Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., announced that the University Commencement Ceremony on May 17 will be held online rather than in Notre Dame Stadium, and that an on-campus celebration has been scheduled for the spring of 2021.
In order to ensure that the graduates’ degrees are conferred and certified in May for the purposes of employment or further studies, Notre Dame will live-stream a ceremony May 17. The commencement speaker, His All-Holiness Bartholomew, Orthodox Archbishop of Constantinople-New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch, and others will be asked to record remarks for the graduates.
After speaking with Class of 2020 officers, Father Jenkins also announced that the University plans to bring this year’s graduates back to campus on Memorial Day weekend 2021 to, in his words, “spend time with your friends, classmates, faculty and others who have been part of your Notre Dame experience … and celebrate your accomplishments.” Details will be announced in coming months.
Given that at calendar year-end Gift Planning employs a “skeleton crew” approach, Gift Planning is uniquely positioned to transition to a remote work environment with minimal disruption.
All gift planning members are expected to retrieve his/her voicemail messages and monitor his/her email regularly during any period of remote work.
GPOs will be expected to utilize laptops and cell phones to function as normal. GPOs will continue to take responsibility for the gifts he/she is working on both in engaging with the regional directors and benefactors and processing gifts that come in during this period.
Region directors will continue to work directly with the GPO and per usual, may reach out to Rich Naponelli with any questions and/or issues including gift acceptance requests.
Development Coordinators will be expected to utilize laptops, be generally available during this time, and proactively engage with his/her GPO as would be the case in the office. We plan to utilize Google chat, text messages, Zoom meetings, conference calls, and emails to mimic the office environment. Over the last 2 years, we have continued to migrate many of our manual processes online so that most if not all processes may be completed without the need to physically transfer paperwork.
Rich Naponelli • 815-236-0550 (c) • rnaponel@nd.edu
Patrick Brennan • 574-850-6972 (c) • pbrenna3@nd.edu
Chris DeTrempe • 574-387-0308 (c) • cdetremp@nd.edu
TJ Pillari • 574-210-1553 (c) • tpillari@nd.edu
Jessica Brice • 574-276-9154 (c) • jbrice@nd.edu
Jennifer Koebel • JenKoebel@nd.edu
Carolyn Lax • lax.3@nd.edu
Maureen Daday • mdaday3@nd.edu
Anne Wieber • awieber1@nd.edu
RaeLee Rea • rrea@nd.edu
All team meetings may be conducted via Zoom or conference calls.
Gift Planning tends to be more paper-intensive than other groups. We are developing a process to allow us to continue to mail physical copies of certain materials. Letters and other mailings that cannot be sent via email or otherwise postposed may be completed by the DC using the GPOs electronic signature. We have developed a Word version of Gift Planning’s letterhead which we can utilize with e-signatures to produce letters without the need to physically sign.
Incoming mail poses a unique problem. However, for any extended period in which Development is working remotely, but mail is still delivered, mail may be handled as we do calendar year-end, with a point person retrieving and opening the mail, assuming access to Eddy Street is granted.
We will follow the standard procedure for the review and transmittal of Gift Planning agreements. All routing forms may be prepared electronically.
Each GPO will continue to be required to prepare his/her own documents for signature and email Rich and/or RaeLee for the initial review. Once approved, the GPO may arrange for signature by the donor. Executed documents will be emailed to Carolyn to begin the DocuSign signature routing. I recommend that during any extended period of remote work, we relax the requirements that CRT and CGA agreements require physical signatures and instead route for signature using DocuSign.
The entirety of the DAF program may be executed remotely. Regional directors and GPOs should continue to reach out to RaeLee via phone, Google chat, or email. Donors wishing to make contributions or recommendations may alert RaeLee via email as they do now.
DAF portal development is expected to continue on schedule as we have been conducting Zoom meetings since inception.
If a GPO is expecting a wire or securities transfer, he/she should email the name of the donor, Advance ID, name of security (if applicable), number of shares (if applicable) and expected amount to all of the following people:
Gift receipts will be emailed to Gift Management and uploaded to the shared drive pursuant to our standard procedures.
Athletics Advancement will be continuing our business as a team through remote work. We may be reached by email or at the cell numbers above. We remain available as a resource to you and your benefactors throughout these challenging times, and we look forward to partnering with you in meaningful ways. To that end, please note the following.
For specific matters related to:
Express Press plans to operate business as usual. FedEx can still print at multiple locations as of now. Those who request printed copies will need to pick them up at either Express Press or the FedEx location they have designated. Lin Wang is the Storytelling point-person for printing.