Notre Dame is a private Catholic University, extending from the West Coast of Australia in the beautiful and historic City of Fremantle, to the North-West town of Broome and across the continent to the heart of Sydney. We embrace the ancient and esteemed traditions of Catholic Universities in Europe, North America and 2000 years of the Catholic Intellectual Tradition. We welcome people of all faiths or none at all. As an academic community, we welcome open and rigorous enquiry, debate and discussion. We have an enrolment of over 12,000 students and offer a comprehensive range of undergraduate and postgraduate programs. Our student experience, employment and graduate outcomes are among the very best in Australia.We provide our students with the theoretical knowledge and professional skills which will empower them to realise their potential, build interconnectedness with all peoples and willingly serve the community through active participation, engagement and reflection. We have a powerful commitment to honouring the individual and recognise that each student is graced with their own gifts and talents. We believe that higher education should prepare students for a rich, fulfilling and reflective life, not just a career path. We are a modern Catholic University, operating in a world in which the vast speed of change is felt in nearly all aspects of our daily lives. We bring to bear our traditions and our values to engage in scholarship and research, to address the developments and challenges of the modern world, to serve the common good and to assist all our students to achieve the academic excellence that we promote and expect.The University of Notre Dame Australia is a national Roman Catholic private university with campuses in Fremantle and Broome in Western Australia and Sydney in New South Wales. The university also has eight clinical schools as part of its school of medicine located across Sydney and Melbourne and also in regional New South Wales and Victoria. Until 2021, Notre Dame was not part of the Western Australia Tertiary Institutions Service Centre (TISC) or the New South Wales Universities Admissions Centre and students apply directly to the university through its admissions process. In July 2021, Notre Dame partnered with TISC to take applications for undergraduate courses in WA through TISC.The university crest is an open Bible. The waves below the open Bible represent the Fremantle area, where the university was founded, and Australia, a nation surrounded by water. In the 2019 Student Experience Survey, the University of Notre Dame Australia recorded the second highest student satisfaction rating out of all Australian universities, and the highest student satisfaction rating out of all Western Australian based universities, with an overall satisfaction rating of 88.In 1945, Father Patrick Duffy, an American navy chaplain, met Cardinal Norman Thomas Gilroy, Archbishop of Sydney, to discuss the possibility of the University of Notre Dame and the Congregation of Holy Cross being involved in the establishment of the first private Catholic university in Australia. At the time, there were roughly 1.5 million Catholics living in Australia and an established network of Catholic primary and secondary schools. Cardinal Gilroy believed that there was a strong appetite for a Catholic university and that it would enable the education of an "elite Catholic laity that had been the glory of the church in the United States".The project was pursued for a number of years and property was purchased in Sydney on behalf of Holy Cross in 1948, but ultimately the charter to establish the university was never acquired and the endeavour was abandoned in 1953. In the mid-1980s, concerns were raised that state universities were not able to properly train lay teachers to work in Catholic primary and secondary schools in Western Australia. The idea of a private Catholic university again surfaced, this time on the opposite side of the Australian continent. Peter Tannock, who headed the Catholic Education Office of Western Australia, discussed these concerns with William Foley, Archbishop of Perth. They enlisted the help of Denis Horgan, a local Catholic businessman and founder of Leeuwin Estate, who they hoped would provide financial assistance in establishing the university. Horgan was supportive of the idea, as long as the institution would provide more than teacher education. A small planning committee with Tannock, Horgan, Foley and Michael Quinlan, a Catholic physician, was established and developed the plan for a Catholic university with a number of sites in Western Australia that would provide medical and nursing education among other fields.The university was created through the University of Notre Dame Australia Act 1989 in the Parliament of Western Australia. The act was given assent on 9 January 1990, the university was inaugurated on 2 July 1991 and classes commenced in February 1992. The first college, the College of Education, had 35 postgraduate students in its first year and the University of Notre Dame (US) sent 25 study abroad students to spend a semester at the Fremantle campus. The Broome campus, originally known as the Kimberley Centre, was opened in 1994 in service of the church and Aboriginal communities in the Kimberley region. In 2006, the Sydney campus was formally opened with an initial enrollment of 450 students.Notre Dame has campuses located in Fremantle and Broome in Western Australia. The university's Sydney campus is spread across two sites – one based in Broadway and the other in Darlinghurst adjacent to St Vincent's Hospital. The Fremantle campus is located in the historic West End of the city, a designated heritage precinct famous for its late Georgian and Victorian-style architecture. The university has rejuvenated much of the West End and has worked to restore the traditional architecture of the precinct, occupying 50 properties since its establishment in 1992 and restoring many buildings. Due to the presence of Notre Dame, Fremantle is commonly referred to as a "university town" much like older university towns in Europe and is the only one of its kind in Australia. The School of Medicine Sydney has eight clinical schools in Sydney, Melbourne and in rural locations across the east coast.The Sydney Clinical School is located across St Vincent's & Mater Clinical School at St Vincent's Hospital, Auburn Clinical School at Auburn Hospital and Hawkesbury Clinical School at Hawkesbury Health Service. The Melbourne Clinical School is located at the Werribee Mercy Hospital. The rural clinical schools are located at the Lithgow Clinical School at Lithgow Hospital, the Ballarat Clinical School at St John of God Hospital Ballarat, the Riverina Regional Training Hub (RRTH) and the Wagga Wagga Clinical School at Calvary Health Care Riverina.The Institute for Health Research draws on the clinical expertise within Notre Dame's Schools of Health Sciences, Medicine, Nursing & Midwifery and Physiotherapy to develop research partnerships and projects that support the healthy ageing of all Australians. Nulungu collaborates with national and international universities, government and Indigenous Australian communities to develop research outcomes of benefit to the country's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It was established by Lyn Henderson-Yates, who herself is an indigenous Australian and is also vice-chancellor of the university's Broome campus. The Institute for Ethics and Society pursues philosophical and interdisciplinary research across five core areas: applied and professional ethics; ethics education; bioethics; religion and global society; and Indigenous research and ethics.The University's Objects are at the heart of all we do as a Catholic university. The founding Objects reflect our distinct educational style, an experience that follows the traditions and practices within the Catholic intellectual tradition while welcoming students of all faiths and beliefs from around the world.The Objects are defined in Section 5 of the Act of Parliament of Western Australia which marked Notre Dame’s establishment in December 1989.The Objects of the University are:the provision of university education, within a context of Catholic faith and values; andthe provision of an excellent standard of -teaching, scholarship and research;training for the professions; andpastoral care for its students.In pursuing these Objects, the University seeks to be an outstanding Australian university, and one of the best Catholic universities in the world. Our Objects have guided our growth and development from a small but enthusiastic intake of just 50 postgraduate Education students on our Fremantle Campus in 1992 – to today’s vibrant community of more than 12,000 students across all three Campuses.
Watch the videos to learn about the student life-cycle and the teaching environment at the University.
