Renamed Institute for Social Concerns reflects expanded research, teaching, and partnerships

October 15, 2024

The University of Notre Dame’s Center for Social Concerns will now be called the Institute for Social Concerns. The name change signals its status as a scholarly unit with faculty from various departments, colleges, and schools whose activities contribute to a comprehensive and multifaceted interdisciplinary mission.

In 2009, the center’s innovative community-engaged research and teaching, together with expansive new partnerships across campus, led the University to designate the center as an institute. In the ensuing 15 years, the center has increasingly refined what it means to be a university institute and the scholarly home for justice on Notre Dame’s campus through an expanding research and teaching agenda.

“Our name change to the Institute for Social Concerns is a call and a reminder that we are at our best when we find ways to leverage the research and teaching strength of Notre Dame in collaboration with the community to grow the common good,” said Suzanne Shanahan, the Leo and Arlene Hawk Executive Director of the institute. “Similar name. Same mission.”

A rich history rooted in Catholic social teaching

The Center for Social Concerns was founded in 1983 by a group of students determined to be a force for good in the world by working alongside communities to address the challenges they face. Together with Rev. Don McNeill, C.S.C., students Mary Meg McCarthy, Judith Anne Beatty, and Stacy Hennessy persuaded then University president, Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., to let them use the recently vacated WNDU television studios to establish an office where they could work on their vision.

Over the next four decades, the center became Notre Dame’s scholarly home for justice rooted in the social teaching of the Church. More than 30,000 students would explore the complex demands of justice and delve into research for the common good through center programs on campus, in and around South Bend, and in 500 communities across the country and around the world.

The institute remains home to the signature immersion experiences that have been popular with alums since the 80s. NDBridge and Social Concerns Fellowships continue to provide summer opportunities for students to engage in research animated by core principles of Catholic social tradition alongside communities across the country and around the world.

New research and teaching capacity

The institute has recently welcomed new faculty researching some of the world’s most pressing social concerns in climate, labor, mass incarceration, migration, poverty, and technology. Bioengineer Megan Levis Scheirer, Ph.D. joined the institute last academic year (a joint appointment with the College of Engineering) and will continue her research and teaching on Catholic social teaching and social technology. She is currently leading a collaborative initiative in the College of Engineering to integrate character across the curriculum.

Ryan Juskus, Ph.D. joined the institute this fall following a postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton and will continue his work at the intersection of ethics, faith, and environmental challenges. Suzanne Mulligan, Ph.D. comes to Notre Dame from St. Patrick’s Pontifical University in Maynooth, Ireland. A theologian, Mulligan applies Catholic social doctrine to a range of social concerns including housing, gender-based violence, and human trafficking.

The institute now offers a range of new courses and programs to complement summer opportunities. Innovative Justice Labs enable undergraduate students to research fundamental questions of justice and develop evidence-based interventions to address them. The McNeill Common Good Fellowship is a three-year opportunity for undergraduates to participate in an interdisciplinary community of practice for students who are especially committed to the pursuit of justice and the common good.

There is also new programming for graduate students. The Graduate Justice Fellowship admitted its second highly diverse cohort this year. Fourteen graduate and professional students from five colleges and almost a dozen departments regularly convened to share their research in progress, discuss scholarship on the pursuit of justice, and hear from Notre Dame faculty committed to research for the common good.

“University institutes are one of the ways in which the University thinks as an institution. They bring faculty and students together for multidisciplinary teaching and research that is often imaginative and daring,” said Vice President and Associate Provost Maura Ryan. “The Institute for Social Concerns is well-positioned to do just that while combining Catholic social teaching and community engagement in places across the country, around the world, and right here in South Bend, Indiana.”