From the Dean - Fall 2026

This is a special edition of the Notre Dame Business, newly renamed and published a little later than usual to coincide with an exciting event at the College — the opening of the new addition to our main building, named after our founding dean, John Francis Cardinal O’Hara, C.S.C. 

It was O’Hara who articulated the charge that remains at the heart of our mission today:

"The primary function of commerce is service to mankind. Business has a code of ethics based very largely on divine principles. When this code is followed, commerce can and does advance civilization."

John Francis Cardinal O'Hara, C.S.C.

As I reflect on our cover story, “The Integrator,” about the early life and formation of O’Hara, I am struck by how someone so young and relatively new to Notre Dame had such a transformative impact on the University. Plainspoken and deeply pragmatic, O’Hara understood two things long before the global economy became a reality in everyday life: Business is a powerful, life-changing force, and ethics needs to play a central role if “commerce” is to fully serve human flourishing. 

The founding of the business school at Notre Dame was not welcomed across the University. In fact, O’Hara first wrote these words in 1923 — just two years after the College was founded — to address some at the University who objected to the establishment of a business school at Notre Dame. The critics considered business as a discipline more akin to vocational training and not appropriate for a great Catholic liberal arts university.

However, O’Hara, the “integrator,” saw business and the liberal arts as partners in a shared mission: educating the whole person to use knowledge, judgment and character in service of the common good.

Pope Leo recently wrote in his encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, “The most extraordinary scientific progress, the most astounding technical feats and the most amazing economic growth, unless accompanied by authentic moral and social progress, will in the long run go against man.”

O’Hara and Leo XIV are telling the same truth across time. O’Hara’s conviction that commerce, when guided by ethical principle, advances civilization finds its counterpart in the pope’s admonition that technical progress needs to be guided by authentic moral and social values to advance true human flourishing. Technical, moral and social progress all together form a complete vision — one that holds business to its highest calling. 

This is the charge of the Mendoza College of Business: to help form men and women who contribute to human flourishing, cooperate with all stakeholders in solidarity and compete with excellence in the external markets by first competing internally toward the best version of themselves, by the grace of God and with the support of others. That is what is meant by our charge to Grow the Good in Business, given to us by our founding dean.

Martijn Cremers

Martin J. Gillen Dean

2026 Magazine Issue