Service
Roche served as the I. A. O’Shaughnessy Dean of the College of Arts and Letters at the University of Notre Dame from 1997 to 2008. Previously, he had served as Chairperson of the Department of German and Russian Languages and Literatures at the University of Notre Dame during 1996–97 and as Chairperson of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the Ohio State University from 1991 to 1996.
The College of Arts and Letters is Notre Dame’s oldest and largest college, encompassing the humanities, the social sciences, and the arts. It houses 20 departments, as well as multiple centers and programs, and includes more than 500 faculty lines, as well as more than 125 staff positions. It offers more than 50% of the University’s undergraduate credit hours and enrolls approximately 3,000 undergraduate majors and 750 graduate students.
Roche’s responsibilities encompassed overall vision and strategic planning; fundraising and external representation and advocacy; major budgetary priorities and decisions; the appointment and review of associate deans and chairs; departmental reviews and evaluations; the hiring of tenured faculty members, including external recruitment to full professorships and endowed chairs; tenure and promotion decisions, including renewal appointments; and leadership development within the college, including playing a broadly pastoral and community-building role.
Some additional details on Roche’s tenure as dean are available in the documents below. Of particular interest may be the inaugural address from 1997 (“Notre Dame’s Triadic Identity”) and the comprehensive dean’s report of 2008, which provides an overview from 1997 to 2008. For a brief article on his tenure as dean see Arts and Letters Reaches New Heights with Roche as Dean. For an interview after his work as dean had been completed, see Lessons from the Dean’s Desk.
Dean’s Addresses and Reports
Dean Roche’s annual addresses on the state of the college were eventually replaced by faculty meetings, held three times per year, at which Dean Roche spoke informally for 20 to 30 minutes, after which there were 30 to 40 minutes for open discussion. Published information on the progress of the college was subsequently moved to the reports and the less formal updates as well as other outlets, such as the Web.
- Dean’s Report 2008: An Overview from 1997 to 2008
- Dean’s Update 2007
- Dean’s Update 2006
- Dean’s Report 2005
- Dean’s Report 2004
- Dean’s Report 2003
- State of the College 2000
- State of the College 1998
- Notre Dame’s Triadic Identity: Inaugural Address 1997
Reference Guide for Arts and Letters Chairpersons and Faculty
This reference guide, designed to articulate both ideals and policies, was introduced in August 1996 and reworked each year, through 2007.
The guide has been updated by Roche’s successors; the current version is available here.
Recent Service
Since stepping down as dean, Roche has continued to be active in service. For example, he chaired a committee to reconfigure how Notre Dame organizes its Graduate School and its allocation of graduate funding, served on the committee that led to the creation of the Keough School of International Affairs, served on the Core Curriculum Review Committee, chaired the Committee’s Catholic Mission Focus Group, chaired the committee that oversaw approval of courses for the Catholicism and the Disciplines designation, and undertook a review of the University’s mission and Catholic hiring.
He is leading a new initiative, still currently in a pilot phase, that is designed to augment the crucifixes that are in our various buildings primarily with two kinds of crucifixes, those that reinforce the universalism of Catholicism and the internationalism of Notre Dame, that is, crucifixes that have signature elements from various parts of the world, including Africa, East Asia, Europe, and Latin America; and those that involve undergraduate research, that is, crucifixes created by students who have artistic capacities or are taking painting or sculpture courses at Notre Dame. You can read a story about the initiative or review the official website.
Within German Roche initiated a project entitled Why Study German?
