Notre Dame College (New Hampshire) - History

History

Notre Dame was founded as a college exclusively for the education of women, and originally occupied two buildings in the well-to-do section of North Manchester. The main building had once been a private mansion designed in the Norman style of architecture, while the adjoining building had actually served as the carriage house. Though a few of the earlier students resided in the upper rooms of the main building, most of the enrolled women commuted to classes from Manchester and its immediate environs. In fact, never in its entire history would the school draw less than half of its students from within commuting distance, and the solid majority of those who attended Notre Dame were the first in their families to attend college, and were from modest to average income households.

Originally intended as a school to train future teachers, Notre Dame remained firm to this commitment while simultaneously branching out into the liberal arts and sciences, business and fine arts, and later on into such fields as communications and the health sciences. Most of the additional buildings to the campus were private homes of various sizes purchased in succeeding years to serve as residence halls for the growing number of students from further distances as well as for administrative offices. However, in the late 1960s, Holy Cross Hall was constructed to function as the epicenter of college activity. The three-level building contained nearly all academic facilities along with an auditorium-gymnasium, chapel and dining hall. The original Norman-style mansion became known as Vezeau House (named in honor of long-serving college president Sister Jeannette Vezeau, CSC), and served as the main administration building. The carriage house was renovated and expanded to become the Paul Harvey Library, named in honor of a local businessman and benefactor, and at its height contained 60,000 volumes and 700 periodical subscriptions, as well as faculty offices and seminar rooms. The only building aside from Holy Cross Hall constructed from scratch was the Nicholas Isaak Student Center which housed a large recreation room as well as student activities and government offices. In later years, the college would purchase a former motel situated about a mile and a half away to serve as additional dormitory space. At the time of its closing, Notre Dame had 22 buildings located throughout North Manchester with a residence hall capacity for approximately 250 students.

Beginning in the 1970s, Notre Dame adopted a policy of partial coeducation by admitting men into its master's degree programs, its evening and weekend undergraduate programs, and as non-resident undergraduate day students. In 1985, the decision was made to become fully coeducational, and men were also admitted as full-time undergraduate resident students. In contrast to many other all-female colleges that had either gone coeducational or were considering the policy, Notre Dame did not experience any notable negative reaction from either students or alumnae, and men in fact were for the most part warmly welcomed as full-time resident students.

The school focused consistently on expanding its undergraduate and graduate programs, and at the time of its closing, offered the Master of Arts degree in counseling and theology (two separate majors), the Master of Education degree in a variety of teacher education subfields, and the Master of Science degree in two health science disciplines, physician assistant studies and in physical therapy. These two latter programs were highly selective, and were based in a former insurance office building in downtown Manchester about a mile away from the main campus.