Happy July NSBH alumni! Please join me in welcoming our newest class of 2025 graduates to this esteemed group of Notre Dame Neuroscience and Behavior alumni! We experienced another great year of campus activity, as well as growth in community engagement and the University's commitment to supporting the Neuroscience and Behavior program.
In 2025, the Provost's Office committed to TEN tenure stream faculty hires over the next three years. If any of you are interested in "coming home", please stay on the lookout for the job ads, or reach out to me directly. In addition to the tenure lines, the College of Science committed four postdoctoral lines dedicated to teaching excellence for your program. We are thrilled to have identified some remarkable individuals who will be joining our team. And, if you're ever in South Bend, please let us know! We want to support your ability to stay connected to your former program, let us know how we did, and connect you with our current students too.
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You can learn more about our growing team, our year in review and ways to stay engaged in the newsletter below. Wishing you all of the happiness and fulfillment that life and vocation have to offer.
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Kind regards,
Nancy Michael, Ph.D.
Co-Director of Undergraduate Studies, Neuroscience and Behavior
Rev. John A. Zahm, C.S.C. Teaching Professor
Department of Biological Sciences
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Welcome our Newest Alumni |
This year we had 144 students graduate across the College of Science and Arts and Letters! The Neuroscience and Behavior program currently totals around 602 students. We are excited about the continued interest in neuroscience and plan to grow and expand this program. If you would like to view videos of the event, please click on the link below the photos.
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For the latest Alumni news, visit our website.
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Senior Awards for Academic Excellence |
To learn more about each award, visit our website.
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Outstanding Undergraduate Research Awards:
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Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Awards:
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| Jerome Christian Hernandez Santiago
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Outstanding Undergraduate Leadership Awards:
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After graduating with the Neuroscience & Behavior program’s Class of 2023, Grace Bradley earned her Master of Science in Management at Notre Dame and became a Double Domer in May 2024. She graduated magna cum laude and was inducted into Beta Gamma Sigma, the national business honors program.
Grace is currently working as a Research Coordinator at the Cleveland Clinic, running clinical drug trials to find a cure for pulmonary hypertension. She works in the brand-new Integrated Hospital Care Institute and is glad to be in the sciences again, using her Compassionate Care in Medicine minor to the fullest! She is a frequent panelist and active member of the ND Club of Cleveland. In her free time, she loves swimming daily, obsessively watching women’s basketball, and exploring all Cleveland has to offer!
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For the most current list of faculty and staff, visit our website.
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James Brockmole, PhD, joined the NSBH team at the start of the school year as Co-Director of the Neuroscience and Behavior Program for the College of Arts and Letters.
We now have two Advisors dedicated to working with our NSBH students: Brianna May and Lindsay Wulf.
Erin Scott joined the NSBH Administrative team in September 2024.
And we are excited to announce the hiring of two post docs that will be joining us this summer: Miranda Schwabe and Coleman Sapp. Here is some information on both of our new team members:
Miranda Schwabe - Hi everyone, my name is Miranda and I am excited to join the Notre Dame NSBH department as a postdoctoral fellow! I recently graduated with a PhD in Psychology/Neuroscience from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where I studied the role of estrogens in promoting memory consolidation. During my PhD I discovered a passion for teaching and my ultimate career goal is to become a professor at a liberal arts college. During my time here I will be teaching a variety of NSBH courses, designing a short-term undergraduate research program, and researching how neuroscience courses can be modified to better meet the needs of students from a variety of backgrounds.
Coleman Sapp - My name is Coleman Sapp and I earned my BS in NSBH from Notre Dame in 2019. I pursued a Ph.D. in Integrative Physiology and Neurobiology at Kent State University. I am excited to return to Notre Dame and am eager to engage with undergraduate students in research exploring the intersection of the endocrine system and social behavior. I will also be teaching a section of the Molecular Neuroscience course as well as a section of the Neuroscience and Behavior Lab. I am particularly interested in incorporating Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) practices across a variety of course formats- from small, discussion-based seminars to large lecture classes.
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The 2024-2025 school year ushered in many new events and programs. Below are some highlights from this year.
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| (neuro)Science in Society Impact Summit |
Learn more about the Impact Summit on our website.
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This event highlights all the ways that neuroscience shows up in society. With a framing plenary session, keynote address, poster session and breakout sessions, there was a great exchange of ideas and a lot of opportunities for networking. We had a fantastic turnout of close to 100 attendees. Please click on the links to the left to watch Kimberly Reeves' keynote address and view photos from the entire event.
If you are interested in supporting the science communication efforts of your Neuroscience and Behavior major, you can join our Michiana chapter no matter where you've landed geographically. Your dues go to support many of the program's science engagement and communication efforts including but not limited to the Impact Summit, the Brain Ambassadors program and our annual Brain Awareness Fairs. If you are local to the Michiana region and are interested in becoming involved in Chapter leadership for our Michiana Chapter of the Society for Neuroscience, you are also invited to please click the link to the left to "Join MSfN Here" and we will be in touch soon.
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Learn more about the Brain Ambassadors on our website.
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This course is in support of broader community engagement efforts for the major where community organizations can request visits from student "Brain Ambassadors" to bring hands-on neuroscience learning to the community! Course time offers student development, neuroscience content, activity design and logistic support for the Brain Ambassadors community engagement platform.
We had 21 Brain Ambassadors for the 2024-2025 school year, up from 11 the previous school year. These ambassadors participated in five key events including a mini brain fair, a new Brain Bee competition, the annual Brain Awareness Fair, and the St. Joseph County Public Library's BookCon and Science Alive events.
New this year, we created a pilot program with the St Joseph County Public Library offering two neuroscience classes. We offered a Your Brain Power class for ages 5-11 years old. And we had a Brain Hacks event targeting teens.
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Learn more about the Brain Awareness Fair on our website.
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The annual Brain Awareness Fair was held at Howard Park in South Bend this past March. Students and faculty welcomed over 200 visitors from the Michiana community and demonstrated ways to keep their brains healthy and active. The event is a way to promote STEM disciplines with hands-on activities to foster public enthusiasm for neuroscience. WNDU was in attendance to share the event with their viewing audience (click on the gold button to the left to watch this segment).
In addition to our annual Brain Awareness Fair, Brain Ambassadors created a mini Brain Fair at the Near Northwest Neighborhood Arts Cafe event in October and participated in the St. Joseph County Public Library’s (SJCPL) Science Alive and BookCon events for the second year.
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Learn more about the Brain Bee on our website.
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The Brain Bee Program partnered with TRIO Talent Search this year. Brain Ambassadors met with local 8th- to 12th-graders who were interested in learning more about brain health. Using a unique activity-based curriculum, Notre Dame students were able to teach students about Neuroscience and spark their joy of learning. Students then choose to compete in an end-of-school-year competition. We had 6 participants this year at our April 23rd Brain Bee and 7 Brain Ambassadors. Congratulations to our winner Samara, a freshman from Adams High School.
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| Distinguished Lecture Series |
Learn more about the Distinguished Lecture Series on our website.
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A new program was launched in the 2023-2024 school year called the Distinguished Lecture Series featuring Fiona Harrison, PhD as our first guest lecturer. For the 2024-2025 school year, we welcomed Peg McCarthy, PhD to the University of Notre Dame for both a student luncheon and a lecture entitled "Sex Differences in the Brain at the Intersection of the Nervous, Immune and Endocrine Systems." We had a FULL HOUSE in the auditorium full of students, faculty, staff, and some community members. Please click on the gold button on the left to watch Peg's lecture.
If you are interested in getting involved in this program, please click on the Alumni survey link.
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Professor Jorydn Wilcox took over the program from Professor Diane Lane. She was pleased to induct 69 students into the Nu Rho Psi Honors Program this year at a beautiful ceremony in the Reading Room of Jordan Hall. We had a little drama when the tornado alerts went off, but everyone was safe and had an enjoyable evening.
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Learn more about the NSBH program since you graduated on our website.
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If you haven't had a chance yet, please check out the new, expanded Neuroscience and Behavior website. We even have a section for our Alumni! Check out all of the Community Engagement we are involved in from Brain Fairs to the Impact Summit to a Distinguished Lecture Series. If you can, please click on the link below to do our Alumni survey. If you did one last summer, please fill it out again so we can see if anything has changed.
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You wouldn't believe how excited we get when we hear from alumni. Please update us through the following Google Form. Thanks!
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| Jordan Hall of Science
Notre Dame, IN 46556 neuroscienceandbehavior.nd.edu
NSBH@ND.edu
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