Belmont college will shift focus to grad school
The 170yearold Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont — which said last year that its future is uncertain — will transform into a graduate and online university, officials said.
The historic Catholic school’s undergraduate program remains in limbo, with a probable focus on transfer students.
Notre Dame de Namure is among many small liberal arts campuses across the country that struggled with declining enrollment and financial difficulties even before the pandemic. Most recently in the Bay Area, Mills College, a women’s college founded in 1852, announced Wednesday that it will stop enrolling firstyear students after the fall, and will grant its final degrees in 2023.
Notre Dame de Namur never announced it would close. But in early March 2020, interim President Daniel Carey said the campus would say by March 13 of that year whether it would close, prompting a protest of about 100 students and professors demanding that its doors stay open.
Then the coronavirus pandemic hit. Campus officials made periodic announcements throughout last year about hopeful developments — such as restarting admissions for some of its graduate programs and reaching a labor agreement with faculty through Aug. 2021.
This year, university officials and the Board of Trustees said the school’s future will be mainly online and focused on graduate programs. After the pandemic the university also hopes to resume some inperson instruction.
“We were not closing, we were trying to find our way forward, trying to find a sustainable future,” Melissa McAlexander, the university’s spokesperson, said Saturday. “We’re really building on the
strong graduate programs that we have.”
Notre Dame de Namur will “transform into a primarily graduate and online university, potentially with undergraduate degree completion programs,” university officials and the Board of Trustees announced Jan. 25.
McAlexander said those programs are expected to focus on transfer students finishing their bachelors degree at the university, though details are not finalized. She said the campus is coordinating with community colleges to set up a “robust transfer program.”
The school had been losing students in recent years, with undergraduate enrollment plunging by a third between 2016 and 2020 — to 680 students from 1,023, the university reported. Graduate enrollment fell by nearly 30% in the same period, to 515 from 730. This semester, as the school’s future has been in doubt, undergraduate enrollment dropped even further, to just 159 undergraduates — an 85% drop from five years ago. Graduate enrollment is roughly the same as last year.
McAlexander said the university will provide more information in the coming days about reopening admissions for its master of business administration and master of public administration programs.