The Schools and Colleges — Foundings and Courses

1865–2017 · the university's parts, dated

The order of founding is the argument. Notre Dame became a university by addition, one school at a time over 150 years, and the sequence — Arts and Letters with the founding, Science 1865, Law 1869, engineering teaching from 1873, Architecture's formal program 1898, Engineering as a college 1920, Commerce 1921, the Graduate School 1918 standing across them all, and Keough 2014 — is carried here school by school at the depth the base survey compressed. The base fragment already owns the general narrative; this article owns the dates, the reorganizations and the two schools that failed or never were.

Arts and Letters, and Science. The College of Arts and Letters is the original college: the faculty of arts was the first organized, with chairs of philosophy, history, mathematics and ancient and modern languages, and it conferred the university's first degrees in 1849. The College of Science grew out of the scientific course established under President Dillon in 1865 — the same year as the first Bachelor of Science (John Cassidy of South Bend, in the base) — with Father Joseph Carrier's Paris mission of 1866 and the United Scientific Association of 1868 building it out, a Science Hall in 1883, and by the early twentieth century the science work stood as a college beside arts. Its present departments are the modern form of that 1865 course; Jordan Hall of Science is its present home, and preprofessional studies is the quiet heir of the medical story told below.

Law, 1869. The law school's founding is documented to the month: the trustees took their first steps in 1868, the department was formally established in January 1869, and classes opened on 1 February 1869 — the second Catholic law school opened in the United States (Saint Louis had opened in 1843 and closed in 1847) and, in the school's own description, the oldest Catholic law school in continuous operation, a characterization printed here as the school's. The first faculty numbered four; the course ran two years and the first LL.B. was conferred in June 1871. The reorganization of 1882–83 under Dean William J. Hoynes — dean from 1883 — made the school: the course lengthened by stages until the three-year program became definitive in 1905, the title ran Department of Law to 1898, School of Law 1898–1905, and College of Law from the 1905 reorganization. The school's homes date its growth: classes first in the Main Building, law rooms in Sorin Hall from January 1889, then the former Institute of Technology building renovated as Hoynes Hall — dated 1916 in one institutional account and opened as the Hoynes College of Law in 1919 in the Law School's own history, both printed — then the new Gothic building on Notre Dame Avenue, occupied 7 October 1930, now Biolchini Hall, joined in the modern era by Eck Hall (2010), the two together holding the school and the Kresge Law Library.

Medicine: the school that never was. The brief for this article names "the early medical school and its closing," and the record corrects the premise: Notre Dame never had a medical school to close. Father Philip Moore's academic history states the verdict in so many words — the Department of Medicine never materialized — and then documents the long near-miss. The charter of 1844 authorized degrees in medicine. Medical certificates were awarded as early as 1866 and continued until 1888. The annual catalogue for 1869–70 and for years afterward carried a notice on anatomy and materia medica under the Rev. L. Neyron, M.D. — the former Napoleonic surgeon of the base fragment's account — stating candidly that for want of a sufficient museum the course embraced principally anatomy, and that the remainder of a medical course was completed at neighboring universities. The tension is printed, not resolved: the catalogues sold a preparatory medical course and the university conferred certificates and medical-class degrees, while its own academic historian denies a department of medicine ever existed as a degree school. What closed the story was not a closure but a fading — the certificates end in 1888 — and a cognate department's documented end: the Department of Pharmacy was discontinued by a decision of early 1935, and the program closed out with its last graduations at the end of 1938–39. The modern university teaches no M.D. of its own; its one doctoral medical program is an M.D.–Ph.D. offered in combination with the Indiana University School of Medicine.

Architecture and Engineering. Architecture's dates carry a one-year conflict the record prints: courses in architectural drawing and design were offered from 1869, the degree-granting program was formally initiated in 1898 and the first architecture degrees were granted that year, while the school's standard institutional entries date its establishment to 1899; the College of Architecture followed in 1906, offering bachelor's and master's degrees in architecture and architectural engineering. Eugenio P. Rayneri y Piedra of Havana, enrolled December 1899, was the first graduate, in 1904; the first master's was conferred in 1918. The First World War gutted enrollment and in 1920 the college was demoted to a department inside the College of Engineering; the undergraduate program lengthened to five years in the 1930s; Robert Amico's chairmanship from 1978 raised it back to a school within Engineering (the elevation is dated 1983 in the school's accreditation history); and in 1994 the School of Architecture became autonomous again. Its homes mark the course: Bond Hall — the former Lemonnier Library — from 1964 to 2019, and the Matthew and Joyce Walsh Family Hall of Architecture from 2019. Its present five-year Bachelor of Architecture, with the third year spent in Rome by all its undergraduates, is stated as its own description. Engineering runs the reverse path: a civil engineering course was offered from 1873 — the magazine's timeline calls Notre Dame in that year the first Catholic college in the United States to found a school of engineering, printed here as that account's claim — engineering lived inside the College of Science for two generations, and the College of Engineering was established as a distinct unit only in 1920, the same reorganization that absorbed Architecture.

Commerce, the Graduate School, and Keough. The business school began as a foreign commerce program launched in 1917 and became the College of Foreign and Domestic Commerce in 1921, founded under Father John F. O'Hara — later the university's president — the last college or school the university would found for nearly a century. It is now the Mendoza College of Business. The Graduate School was established in 1918 — the date the provost's office prints in every modern accounting — organizing graduate work that reached back to the Master of Arts of 1859; it was significantly expanded under President O'Hara in the 1930s, and it stands today in four divisions (engineering, humanities, science, social sciences) embracing more than thirty departments and programs and over 2,500 graduate students in the provost's current accounting, printed as theirs. The line ends where the modern university begins: on 1 October 2014 the university announced the Donald R. Keough School of Global Affairs, the first new college or school since 1921, made possible by gifts totaling 50 million dollars from Donald and Marilyn Keough, with R. Scott Appleby as founding dean. The school took up its work in Jenkins Hall, opened in August 2017, with a master's in global affairs at its center. The university is organized today into the seven schools and colleges this article has dated — Arts and Letters, Science, Law, Architecture, Engineering, Mendoza, Keough — with the Graduate School across them.

Sources:

1. Philip S. Moore, "Academic Development of Notre Dame," Law School and College of Science sections (archives.nd.edu) — law steps in 1868, established January 1869, first LL.B. June 1871, Hoynes reorganization 1882–83, three years definitive 1905; "The Department of Medicine never materialized," certificates 1866–1888, the 1869–70 anatomy notice under Neyron, pharmacy discontinued 1935 to 1938–39.
2. Notre Dame Law School, "About the Law School" (scholarship.law.nd.edu) and the school's institutional history — opened February 1869, Sorin Hall 1889, Hoynes College of Law 1919, the 1930 building occupied 7 October 1930, Eck and Biolchini halls; the 1916 Hoynes Hall date in the school's encyclopedia history printed beside it.
3. School of Architecture, program history and NAAB program report (architecture.nd.edu) — courses 1869, first official course 1889, formal program 1898, first graduate 1904, College 1906, department in Engineering 1920, school status 1983, autonomy 1994; the 1899 establishment date in the university's standard entries printed beside 1898.
4. University catalog and college accounts — College of Engineering established 1920, civil engineering from 1873; College of Science from the 1865 course; Notre Dame Magazine timeline for the 1873 engineering claim, attributed.
5. Office of the Provost, University of Notre Dame — the Graduate School established 1918, its divisions and present enrollment; the Mendoza line from the 1917 foreign commerce program and the 1921 college; the Keough School announcement of 1 October 2014 ($50 million in Keough gifts, Appleby founding dean, Jenkins Hall to open August 2017, first new school since 1921).