Intellectual Community
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Your Research Matters, You Matter
The pursuit of Research That Matters doesn't happen in a vacuum. At Notre Dame, students engage with a diverse community of scholars from different backgrounds. Yet despite our differences we share the same goals: to encourage colleagues and promote a culture of support.
Your engagement with Notre Dame's intellectual community can occur on multiple levels. For immersive, academic engagement the Graduate School offers structured, inter-disciplinary student organizations, like the NDIAS-Graduate School Ph.D. Fellows program and the Global Dome Exchange Program. Additionally, opportunities like Thesis & Dissertation Camp challenge students to broaden expertise through social engagement.
For engagement with the community in less formal contexts, students can access funding for a variety of pursuits, from Writing Accountability Groups to student-led speaker series to exploring the cultural offerings of South Bend. And, don’t forget to simply join peers in the vibrant conversations taking place in the brand new Graduate Student Lounge.
A strong, tight-knit community builds wellness and helps students thrive. When students are thriving in their community and collaborating with peers across disciplines, they enhance their ability to discover in their fields, to cultivate leadership qualities, and to teach across broad audiences.
Structured student academic groups:
PhD students take part in a dissertation discussion group
NDIAS-Graduate School PhD Fellows program: Comprised of a small cohort of doctoral students from across the University of Notre Dame, NDIAS-Graduate School Ph.D. Fellows will participate in a year-long program aimed at increasing their ability to conduct research in an interdisciplinary setting, developing their research communication skills, and cultivating their professional and scholarly network, all within the context of a vibrant and supportive intellectual community.
Global Dome Exchange Program: This three-week initiative invites humanities students to accelerate their dissertation progress within an international context while building their scholarly network
Leaders Advancing Socially Engaged Research (LASER)
Society of Women Engineers (SWE)
Association for Women in Science (AWIS)
Writing-based intellectual community:
In addition to intensive writing support groups that require year-long commitments, like NDIAS-Graduate School PhD Fellows program mentioned above, Notre Dame also offers less formal opportunities to form intellectual community through writing support:
The Notre Dame Writing Center: through one-on-one consultations with experienced tutors, the Writing Center supports student writing projects of all levels and academic backgrounds. Schedule a one-on-one consultation or consider signing up for the Writing Center's Thesis & Dissertation Camp (supported dually by Hesburgh Libraries). A full list of the Writing Center's resources for graduate students may be found here.
The Office of Grants and Fellowships: located within the Graduate School, the Office helps students identify potential supplemental funding sources and develop competitive applications. Students build community as they engage peer feedback to develop competitive applications for prestigious funding organizations. Through international awards, students engage not only with the Notre Dame intellectual community, but with the intellectual community of the world.
Writing Accountability Groups: through the Office of Graduate Student Life, students have the opportunity to form writing groups, articulate goals, and apply for funding to provide coffee and snacks for writing sessions.
Shaheen Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition
Language-based intellectual community:
The Center for the Study of Languages and Culture (CSLC) offers several opportunities for students and faculty to build intellectual community through language development. The CSLC's English for Academic Purposes, for example, offers English support for international students. Additionally, students can participate in the CSLC's courses, workshops, peer tutoring, and language tables, which provide opportunities for fun, unstructured conversations in a variety of languages.
Campus cultural offerings for building community:
Click to view Solarium Catalogue 2018
Notre Dame invites you to build informal intellectual community around its abundant cultural resources. Consider gathering friends and colleagues to visit the Solarium Gallery Opening, Snite Museum of Art, or Browning Cinema, a world-class art house cinema presenting curated series and exclusive releases. Or, keep up with the Notre Dame intellectual community by catching the Provost Office's new podcast With a Side of Knowledge or following the President Office's annual Forum.
Additional community-building resources:
Graduate Student Lounge: engage in informal, stimulating conversations with peers and friends from all academic disciplines in a supportive, scholarly environment
Graduate Student Clubs and Organizations
Grad Life Grants: apply for funding to plan academic-based events, within your department or across disciplines
GO Grants: apply for funding to plan recreational, community-building outings with your peers in Greater Michiana