Throughout its 104-year history, Notre Dame Academy has provided a very focused educational environment, challenging girls and young women to learn to their full capacities -- capacities even greater than their times and their societies thought possible.
Notre Dame Academy was founded by smart, independent, powerful women, the Sisters of the Congregation of Notre Dame (CNDs). These women refused to believe the sterotypes about what girls could or should learn. From the beginning, the curriculum at NDA provided a complete academic program, including “male” subjects like physics and geometry, as well as cultivating girls physical and athletic abilities. The students at NDA were prepared for college when that was still a radical idea as the norm for young women.
The Sisters didn’t “finish” girls; they empowered girls. Notre Dame Academy enabled students to identify and unfold their boundless potential and gifts, and positioned them as future history-makers and leaders.
The CNDs use the term Liberating Education to describe the NDA educational approach. This approach cultivates the mind, heart, body and soul. It is rooted in the firm belief and bold hope that the search for God and the search for truth, for wisdom, for justice and for life itself are integrally related.
Liberating Education is NDA’s sacred legacy and single-minded commitment. As with any legacy, it has gone through many seasons, different generations and various understandings. Consequently, the curriculum, programs and facilities of NDA have continued to evolve over the decades. Today, educating girls and young women for global citizenship and leadership is the NDA educational imperative.
In this 104th year, NDA’s relentless pursuit of Liberating Education requires a campus expansion for excellence. Preparing girls and young women for world leadership demands that NDA guarantees them a world-class education: an education that represents a gold standard in global educational excellence.
Confident in the strength of its heritage and the power of the imagination for the future, NDA invites YOU to become an investor in the lives of girls and young women through the second century expansion for excellence.
Focusing resources and attention on developmental issues of today’s girls and young women, preparing students for global citizenship and leadership, and preserving the charm and architectural integrity of the original spaces are the priorities for this expansion. Funds raised will be used to improve and optimize the learning environment of the entire campus.
To remain true to its mission, NDA has refounded, reenergized and reorganized itself throughout its first century.
Today it proclaims proudly, boldly and passionately to a new century that:
In the tradition of the Congregation of Notre Dame,
the mission of Notre Dame Academy
is to advance, embody and excel at
Liberating education,
an education that leads each girl and young woman
to become an agent of her own transformation
and the transformation of society.
Since NDA seeks to advance and embody excellence, we have strategically planned to address those limitations through our Expansion for Excellence Campaign.