Developing a vision of a life well-lived
The Moreau First-Year Seminar integrates academic rigor with personal growth, bringing together the Notre Dame community in the shared endeavor to study and practice living well.
The faculty
This fall, a 129-member cohort of faculty and staff will teach Notre Dame's newest students.
The commonplace book
This book is a statement that what you do in this course matters, and that you matter.
Moreau Peer Leaders
Upper-class students integrate perennial questions with real-life applications at Notre Dame.
the Moreau FYS signature event
What does it mean to live a good life?
An Evening with the President, the Moreau First-Year Seminar's Signature Event, takes place on September 24 in Notre Dame Stadium.
As a foreshadowing of students' Commencement in 2030 and drawing from the Moreau FYS readings, Fr. Bob Dowd, C.S.C., University President, will join all first-year students in a keynote conversation on the theme of living well at Notre Dame and beyond. Moderated by two Moreau Peer Leaders, the conversation will offer candid, practical insights on how to translate the questions of the Moreau FYS into everyday student life.
course description
The Moreau First-Year Seminar provides you an opportunity to study and practice living well. Your inquiry will be informed by diverse texts, contemporary authors from our community, the perspectives of instructors and peers, and co-curricular experiences. You will address perennial questions about worth, purpose, and relationships with others, the world, and God. Animated by Notre Dame’s Catholic mission and a sacramental vision of God working through persons, you will engage such questions in community. You will join peers in stepping back from the routines and tasks of life, considering your life at Notre Dame as a whole, and participating in the life-long endeavor of living well. You will conclude your Moreau experience in your final year when you reflect on your efforts to live well and anticipate how to flourish after graduation.
learning goals
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You will be able to practice disciplined attention to self, others, the world, and God, and articulate how you can live accordingly.
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You will be able to participate actively in your holistic formation by articulating how you are loved and how you are called to love.
co-curricular events
This course encourages students to integrate the coursework into their everyday lives. Students are required to engage in several co-curricular learning exercises that invite them to explore the course topics within the context of Notre Dame and apply these topics to their life. Integrating curricular and co-curricular learning will enable students to participate actively in their holistic formation and couple the study and the practice of living well.
More about co-curricular events
course format
This course (MOR 10101) is a one-credit seminar that meets for 75 minutes once a week for 11 sessions of the fall semester. The course is a component of the Core Curriculum of Notre Dame and is taken by all undergraduate first-year students.
The syllabus (including readings and assignments - all contained with the Moreau First-Year Seminar commonplace book) is common across all sections and provides students an occasion to study and practice living well. Faculty execute the planned sessions and readings with great flexibility to help their students engage with the course questions.
Sections of MOR 10101 are capped at around 20 students to better enable faculty to foster a sense of community both inside and outside of the classroom. Each section benefits from a Moreau Peer Leader, an upper-class undergraduate student who serves as integral instructional support and as a catalyst in building a sense of genuine community.
Students are required to participate in course-sponsored co-curricular events. These experiences are designed to enable all to engage deeper with one or more of the topics or questions of the course.
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Blessed Basil Moreau, C.S.C.
"Education is the art of helping young people to completeness."
This program is named after Bl. (Blessed) Basil Moreau, C.S.C., (1799–1873) a French Catholic priest who founded a religious community devoted to education. He sought to renew the Catholic Church in the aftermath of the French Revolution by organizing sisters, brothers, and priests to serve as teachers and missionaries. This community took its name from the neighborhood of Le Mans where they convened: Sainte-Croix, which translates as “Holy Cross” in English. Fr. (Father) Moreau later chose to retain brothers and priests within the Congregation of Holy Cross and to constitute a parallel congregation for sisters. When he sent members from both of these congregations to the United States, they respectively founded the University of Notre Dame and Saint Mary’s College. Fr. Moreau is a candidate for sainthood, so he bears the title “Blessed” since his beatification in 2007.
Fr. Moreau promoted a holistic vision of education by insisting that “the mind will not be cultivated at the expense of the heart.” In an address to the University of Notre Dame President and Board of Trustees in 2024, Pope Francis affirmed that Moreau’s vision of cultivating completeness captures “the secret of education” worthy of emulation at all Catholic colleges and universities. This program seeks to continue Fr. Moreau’s vision of education by allowing you to be not only informed but also transformed.