The Mendoza College of Business is the business school at the University of Notre Dame, a private university in Notre Dame, Indiana. Founded in 1921, it offers both undergraduate and graduate degrees. It is ranked among the top 30 business schools in the United States for graduate and MBA programs by Bloomberg Businessweek, Forbes, and U.S. News & World Report. Apart from its main campus, it also offers an executive MBA, master’s in finance, and master’s in business analytics in Chicago. It has a network of over 40,000 undergraduate and graduate alumni. The school was renamed in 2000 following a donation to the school by Tom Mendoza. History Business and commerce classes had been taught at Notre Dame since its foundation, and already in 1853 there was a Mercantile Department. The teaching of business was yet fragmented for many years, with the Department disappearing from 1856 to 1860, and then being reformulated as a Two-year Commercial Course in 1863. This course taught Book-keeping, Penmanship, Arithmetic, Algebra, English Grammar and Composition, Elocution, Geography, History, German, Business Practice, and Commercial Law and was stable for several years. In 1905, it was renamed Commercial School and it became a one-year program. In 1910 meanwhile, the program was inserted into the preparatory school curriculum and became a for year course. Meanwhile, in 1913, a proper Department of Commerce was established within the College of Arts and Letters. This included several courses on secretarial and business work but also training for managerial and executive positions. The main program offered was a four-year Bachelor of Philosophy in Commerce, with classes in accounting for four semesters, with additional classes in money, credit and banking, public finance, economic development in the United States, railway transportation, industrial organization and combination, insurance, and Business Law. Additional coursework included several foreign languages, economics, philosophy, politics, labor problem, American government, and elocution. In 1917, Notre Dame became the first university to launch a four-year course in Foreign Commerce. The real beginning of the school was on 20 April 1921, when the department was removed from the College of Arts and Letters and became the separate College of Commerce. The first dean of the college was John Francis O'Hara (who later became the president of the University and a Cardinal). O'Hara (who himself had spearheaded the new Foreign Commerce) was inspired by his knowledge of business. He had studied at Wharton and of