Notre Dame, Holy Cross collaborating on downtown hub with Lilly Endowment grant
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The University of Notre Dame was recently awarded a $30 million grant from Indianapolis-based Lilly Endowment Inc.’s College and Community Collaboration (CCC) initiative for a proposed downtown South Bend Tech and Talent Hub.
About two miles south of its campus, the hub is set to breathe new life into the former South Bend Tribune building, which the university acquired late last year, and also helps the school move closer to its goal of integrating with the greater South Bend community.
“The DTSB Tech and Talent Hub will not only enhance Notre Dame’s research capabilities, but also drive significant economic growth and community development in downtown South Bend,” President Rev. Robert Dowd said. “This project exemplifies our commitment to integrating research and innovation with impactful community engagement, fostering both local and regional advancement.”
Inspired by similar efforts in Durham and Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the school said it will collaborate with industry partners to advance applied research in data analytics, artificial intelligence and advanced computing.
“The sense of momentum in our community is fueled by a step-change in cross-sector collaborations at the local and state level,” Notre Dame Executive Vice President Shannon Cullinan said. “We hope that this purposeful reinvention of a historic venue in downtown South Bend will further enhance the region’s bright future.”
Holy Cross College will receive $2.5 million from the Notre Dame grant to create a Center for Leadership and Ethics within the Tech and Talent Hub. It will also offer drop-in services to local entrepreneurs as part of expanded Notre Dame programming.
“We were delighted, frankly, to be contacted by Notre Dame and invited to be a partner with them on the concepts that they were working on,” Holy Cross College President Marco Clark said. “We’re just really honored to be able to partner with Notre Dame and it really comes down to our desire and their desire to make a greater impact on this region.”
After his appointment in 2022, Clark, spent the entire first year meeting with community leaders in the business and not-for-profit space to find out how the school could broaden its impact in the region, aligning perfectly with the announcement for the CCC from the Lilly Endowment.
“There’s eight colleges and universities in this region and we certainly do not want to be redundant or undermine, in any way, really successful programs that already exist, for example, at Ivy Tech Community College,” Clark said. “So this fall, we will conduct a needs analysis and a gap analysis. We really want to find what is an unmet need in the world of micro-credentials and workforce development.”
Being an accredited institution, Clark, believes Holy Cross is well positioned to create industry standard credentials for the center’s programs. Leadership development, ethics and project management upskilling are some of the areas of focus.
“Often people are trained exceptionally well in the technologies that they’re working with every day,” he said. “But how often do they receive that more broad liberal arts instruction that could help add value and enhance what they bring to the table in the workplace?”
The center will also offer courses for formerly incarcerated people, students in the region and the not-for-profit community. In-person and virtual options will be available, including opportunities for on-site training at a company or not-for-profit.
Drawing from the work of Michelle Weise on Long-life Learning, the center is poised to retrain, upskill and reinvent people over the course of their careers as they get into jobs that currently do not exist.
The five-year, $2.5 million grant will be applied towards personnel and program research and development. With the expectation that it would be self-sustaining by the end of the grant period, Clark said the school hopes to hire an executive director to lead the initiative by January 2025, in addition to launching its first program by next summer.
“If it’s helping to open new opportunities and new doorways, new pathways to strengthen skills and to strengthen people in their leadership abilities, then we feel like that we would have been successful with this,” Clark said. “We value and are grateful for the partnership of the University of Notre Dame, it adds a level of credibility and enhances our own profile in the community.”
A partnership with South Bend City Church, located in an adjacent building, will also see the Tech and Talent Hub develop and offer other community-facing programming.
The hub is part of a growing investment in downtown South Bend could surpass the $1 billion mark in the next several years, propelled by multiple housing projects, a medical tower investment and a new performing arts space. The city has also launched a downtown planning process, Downtown 2045, with the goal of envisioning the future and sustaining the current momentum.
“This transformational investment in the heart of South Bend will turbocharge our downtown and our regional economy,” South Bend Mayor James Mueller said. “I am grateful to our partners at the University of Notre Dame and Lilly Endowment for their commitment to a brighter future for our community.”
Additionally, Grace College in Winona Lake received a $27 million grant from Lilly Endowment, the largest donation in the school’s history. The money will fund a variety of projects addressing innovation, wellness, connection and placemaking that the school foresees will attract over $100 million in additional investment.
“We have funding partners identified, some are committed, some have expressed an intent to contribute or partner with us in the future,” Grace College assistant vice president of strategy and operations Kelsi Griffith said. “A lot of it will be through those community partners who provided letters of support for our grant proposal, there will also be a fundraising component.”
Grace, the town of Winona Lake, the city of Warsaw and other community partners developed the Catalyst Corridor Project, a collection of initiatives along Winona Avenue in Warsaw, through the Grace campus on Kings Highway and out to the east side of Winona Lake on Pierceton Road.
A Business Innovation Center, an Orthopedic Innovation Research Center, biking trails, sidewalks and a community fieldhouse with an outdoor fitness court are some of the projects that the Lilly grant will partially fund at varying levels.
“The community collaboration is our favorite part of this grant proposal. Our highly engaged community partners challenged us to think bigger throughout the planning process and proposal development,” Griffith said. “We love where we are situated, here in Winona lake, the greater Warsaw, Kosciusko County area, and those partners continue to be pivotal in helping us complete this grant and implement it for the betterment of our community.”
Along with the three northern Indiana colleges, 10 other schools across the state offering four-year degree programs and with physical campuses in Indiana also received grants in the latest and final round of the CCC initiative.
Aimed at fostering deeper connections between schools and the communities they are in, the initiative helps both parties envision and deploy significant community development efforts to create more vibrant places for living, learning, working and playing.
“The Endowment looks forward to seeing all the projects in the CCC initiative evolve,” Lilly Endowment president Jennett Hill said in written remarks. “We are enthusiastic about the prospects for both the institutions and communities and are eager to see these institutions and their community stakeholders collaborate to breathe life into their promising projects.”