News & Events News
The Notre Dame campus and Pardini Park were transformed into a playground for historical figures, evil witches and all manner of creative characters on Wednesday as students, faculty and staff celebrated Halloween with a costume contest, games, food and fun including the ever-popular donut on a string game!
Notre Dame's fall drama production was twice as much fun as usual this year as the cast and crew worked to bring two productions, Cinderella, Cinderella and Twinderella to audiences. The cast and crew, comprised of more than 120 students, brought delight to family and friends in the audience over two weekends. In addition, the production was performed for local children's groups.
Notre Dame’s junior class had the opportunity to hear a performance by No-No Boy, a multimedia concert performed by Julian Saporiti and Erin Aoyama this week. No-No Boy aims to illuminate an understudied past and in doing so, generate conversations about the present with diverse audiences. Using music to process their research and family legacies, Saporiti and Aoyama return often to a refrain they’ve heard spoken by those who have lived through the trauma of war and incarceration, “Do not let this happen, again.”
The Class of 2022 gathered with parents, faculty, and staff for the annual Freshman Family Liturgy this week. This teaching mass offers an introduction to Catholic liturgy and includes connections to prayer practices from the many faiths represented in our diverse community.
Best selling author and publisher Dave Eggers joined the ND community last week for the 12th annual ND Reads event. The subject of this year's ND Reads selection, The Monk of Mokha, Mokhtar Alkhanshali, joined Dave for a discussion about the book, the American Dream and concepts of hyphenated identities and the dignity of work.
In the first competition of the year, the Janksters earned a place as second-seeded alliance captains at CalGames last week. This was the highest qualification ranking in team history!
Forty juniors joined the Class of 2022 for one of Notre Dame's time-honored traditions, Freshman Sleepover. The big sisters took charge of the event, helping the newest members of the ND sisterhood with games and activities that, ultimately, lead them to voting on the colors and mascot that will identify them throughout their high school years and even as they join the more than 8,000 alumnae in the ND network! We're excited to introduce the Orange and Light Blue Raptors!
To further their discussion around inclusion and exclusion, a key theme for the year, the entire junior class recently ventured to Angel Island. Now a California State Park, Angel Island served as a “holding place” in the early 1900s for primarily Chinese immigrants after strict immigration laws severely restricted them from entering the United States. It functioned as both an immigration and deportation facility, at which some 175,000 Chinese and about 60,000 Japanese immigrants were detained, generally from two weeks to six months, before being allowed to enter the United States.
Notre Dame seniors Cynthia, Anisha, Sahithi and Cassidy recently joined a prestigious group of high school seniors recognized as National Merit Semifinalists in the 2019 National Merit Scholarship Program. Because of their truly superb performance on the PSAT, all four young women will be considered for National Merit, college and corporate-sponsored scholarships if they move to finalist status, notification of which is made in the spring
Students recently took a walking field trip to San Jose State University's Thompson Gallery to view artist Jonathan Fung's video art installation, Prey, and learn from the author. Students discussed the intersection of art and justice and the atrocity of sexual exploitation through the metaphoric and symbolic meaning of Prey.
In the first interdisciplinary, all-class field trip of the year, the Class of 2022 visited San Jose’s Japantown, bringing to life core ideas from Notre Dame’s Education for Justice & Leadership curriculum and the freshman summer reading book, Samurai’s Garden, by Gail Tsukiyama.
KQED's online platform, KQED Learn, currently features four book reviews written by Notre Dame students. The site will soon feature a fifth student review of The Catcher in The Rye, to be included as part of the PBS Great American Read list.
A sea of grey skirts flowed over the downtown San Jose streets as more 700 members of the Notre Dame community of students, faculty and staff made their way to the Cathedral Basilica of St. Joseph, our downtown place of worship, for the first liturgy of the school year.
Pardini Park was buzzing with seniors dressed in green and gold as they prepared to make their grand entrance into Notre Dame’s first mixer of the 2018-2019 school year. In attendance was more than half of the Class of 2019, determined to make sure the back to school mixer was an unforgettable experience. Their green and gold spirit was evident, even in the lights that shone on the dancers.
Notre Dame High School has been ranked as the number one Catholic school in Santa Clara County and third in the state by Niche, the largest website for researching K-12 schools, for the second consecutive year! In addition, the school was named the number two all-girl's school (#5 in California) and number one in diversity among private schools. We recognize that we are ranked among outstanding schools and are thankful for this distinction.
Students fill the campus with joy and laughter once again, enjoying the first days of classes, sports, co-curricular programs and a variety of other activities. They are also enjoying some new campus features including an outside cafe gathering area and a peaceful garden.
Last night we celebrated the Class of 2018 Dragons and their many accomplishments at the Senior Recognition Ceremony! At this morning’s assembly, their Notre Dame sisters cheered and shed a few tears as the Dragons left Julie Billiart Hall for the final time and officially joined the global network of Notre Dame alumnae.
Notre Dame's Class of 2018 battled faculty and staff in what has become a well-loved tradition - an epic water balloon showdown! Auctioned off to the highest bidder at Notre Dame's annual 'party of the year' benefit, the rights to participate went to the senior class this year. In addition to being a whole lot of fun, the water balloon battle raised funds for tuition assistance and program development.
Freshmen recently strengthened their bonds of sisterhood through a day-long retreat experience at Santa Teresa Parish. They also spent a day exploring themes of environmental stewardship and personal responsibility at the Guadalupe River Park where they spent time weeding the orchard, removing invasive species and analyzing the various species living in the river.
More than 400 guests spent a beautiful sunny morning on the Notre Dame campus last weekend, coming together for the first time as the Class of 2022. Joined by their family members, our newest students met with faculty and staff to learn about life on campus and the many co-curricular opportunities.
Students applied their classroom learning about calories and energy to create Nutritional Care Packages for donation to St. Josephs. In the process, they learned what concepts of heat, energy and calories have to do with homelessness in our own downtown San Jose neighborhood.
Students from Notre Dame's Muslim Student Association participated in the 7th annual Muslim Day at the Capital this week. They were given the opportunity to lobby on behalf of bills addressing important current issues including school safety and immigration.
The author of Wherever There's a Fight: How Runaway Slaves, Strikers, Suffragists Immigrants, and Poets Shaped Civil Liberties in California recently spoke to the junior class, sharing stories of little-known activists that have fought for civil rights in California.
Students from more than ten Bay Area schools performed in Nazaara 2018, an annual dance showcase hosted by Notre Dame and Bellarmine high schools. Proceeds from this annual event benefits One School at a Time, or OSAAT, an organization that helps build schools in rural India.
Students, faculty and staff enjoyed a morning walk to our downtown place of worship, Cathedral Basilica of St. Joseph for a Holy Week service. In his homily, Monsignor Cilia encouraged young people to raise their voices for those in need and for justice. The liturgy also included a blessing of immersion trip participants as well as all those who have taken action to rise up in leadership, justice and solidarity.