The University of Notre Dame has removed a longtime staff value that explicitly required employees to “accept and support” the university’s Catholic mission, replacing it with a shorter list of values that does not reference Catholic identity by name.
The change was announced at staff town halls Oct. 29 and 30. The new “ND Values,” Community, Collaboration, Excellence, and Innovation, apply to the university’s roughly 4,500 staff members.
The previous set, created nearly 20 years ago under the university’s former president, Father John Jenkins, C.S.C., included five values, one of which — “Leadership in Mission” — directly referenced the Catholic mission and evaluated staff on their adherence to it.
That value no longer appears on the list.
According to a Nov. 14 report from the independent student publication The Observer, the former values and descriptions included:
- Accountability: Takes responsibility and ownership for decisions, actions and results
- Teamwork: Works cooperatively as a member of a team and is committed to team objectives
- Integrity: Demonstrates honest and ethical behavior and displays a high moral standard
- Leadership in Excellence: Shows initiative and commitment to improving results while considering the common good
- Leadership in Mission: Understands, accepts and supports the University’s Catholic mission and fosters values consistent with that mission
According to The Observer, the new Notre Dame Values shape workplace culture, inform presidential awards, and guide annual performance reviews. NDWorks listed the four updated values as: Community, Collaboration, Excellence and Innovation.
- Community: Treat every person with dignity and respect
- Collaboration: Work together with honesty, kindness and humility
- Excellence: Pursue the highest standards with a commitment to truth and service
- Innovation: Embrace opportunities with creativity and dedication
In an email to staff about the changes in values cited by The Observer, Vice President for Human Resources Heather Christophersen said the university removed the mission-specific value because staff struggled to understand what it required, and managers struggled to evaluate it, particularly because Notre Dame does not track the religious affiliation of staff.
She added that she and University President Father Robert A. Dowd, C.S.C., agreed that the Catholic mission should serve as a guiding framework rather than a standalone performance measure. The new values, Christophersen wrote, “might not say specific mission-related words, but I think trying to weave them throughout was our goal.”
“It’s in everything we do,” she added to the email.
Christophersen also shared how Fr. Dowd raised updating the staff values shortly after taking office in June 2024. Over the next 18 months, Human Resources gathered feedback from focus groups, university leaders and staff, aiming to create a set of expectations grounded in kindness, humility, and service — themes she said consistently surfaced during the review process. She also shared she had received feedback that the previous values were “stale.”
“We thought it was an opportunity to refresh them and to make these [values] feel more connected to Notre Dame.”
“They could be values anywhere. They could be a value at Northwestern or Duke or Stanford, or they could be in the corporate world,” Christophersen said. “They didn’t feel Notre Dame.”
At the town halls, she introduced the updated values as a “refresh of longtime organizational principles,” telling staff the new list reflects how Notre Dame “seeks to advance its mission as a global, Catholic research university,” according to NDWorks, the university’s internal news site.
According to NDWorks, Christophersen concluded the town hall sessions by giving employees their first look at the updated ND Values, describing them as a clearer, more mission-aligned expression of how staff advance the University.
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