In 1844, two years after founding Notre Dame, Fr. Edward Sorin wrote: “When this school, Our Lady’s school, grows a bit more, I shall raise her aloft so that, without asking, all men shall know why we have succeeded here. To that lovely Lady, raised high on a dome, a Golden Dome, men may look and find the answer.” Through the intercession of Our Lady, Heaven was pleased to call around Fr. Sorin good teachers who would carry on the Catholic tradition of education; others would follow. Notre Dame’s history is now full of such teachers. Many great Catholic intellectuals and teachers have filled the ranks of the faculty at the University of Notre Dame, people who have—in the words of one such faculty member, Frank O’Malley—helped the university continue in its mission to “redeem the time.” In the midst of a “deliriously secular culture,” Notre Dame remains a place true to its foundations, a place where it is not entirely unrealistic to dream of making the Truth visible to the world. The light that burned in that first sanctuary lamp in 1842 has been kept alive through the efforts of many great Catholic intellectuals and teachers at the University of Notre Dame. Looking to that golden dome, people may know why the Catholic intellectual and moral tradition has been kept alive at the University of Notre Dame. It is because Notre Dame, Our Lady, is our Mother. Enjoy the profiles below of the history of the university and of some of her outstanding professors.