Stanford University announced this week that it intends to buy Notre Dame de Namur University’s Belmont campus, a move that would give Stanford additional space to expand its educational programs and Notre Dame the financial boost to stay afloat.
The two universities have signed an official agreement to work toward such a purchase.
“We are delighted to be planning for the future of the Belmont campus in a way that strengthens both universities and our respective connections to the community,” Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne said in a written statement. “We have a chance to envision new and innovative academic uses for the site that are grounded in its rich history and embrace the dynamism of the Bay Area.”
Notre Dame de Namur University — a small private Catholic university established in 1851 — is the third-oldest university in California and was the first authorized to grant the baccalaureate degree to women.
But in the decades since it opened, NDNU has struggled with enrollment and financial challenges, forcing officials to drop programs, lay off staff, eliminate athletics and transfer some students to other colleges.
As recent as last year, NDNU officials were considering closing the school permanently. However, in January, the school’s Board of Trustees decided to keep it open and focus on transforming the school into a primarily graduate and online university, offering master’s degree programs in education, business and clinical psychology.
The decision to remain open was based on a “high degree of confidence” that the university would be able to sell the campus to a “compatible organization” and provide NDNU with the necessary funds to “see the university through to sustainability,” then- NDNU President Dan Carey said in a statement at that time.
The school’s current president, Beth Martin, said the new agreement with Stanford will give NDNU the “flexibility to grow again in new and exciting ways.”
“We will be able to continue the programs for which we are so well known, and to add new programs directly targeted to changing student needs, including a mix of in-person, hybrid and fully online programs,” Martin said in a statement.
The announcement comes just two weeks after another small Bay Area college — Mills College in East Oakland — reached a similar deal to save itself from financial ruin. The small private liberal arts college signed a merger with Boston-based Northwestern University. The two schools plan to jointly develop the academic programs to be offered under the Mills-Northeastern umbrella starting in the Fall of 2022.
NDNU’s campus is located off Ralston Avenue west of El Camino Real on 46.3 acres of valuable land in the middle of Silicon Valley. The campus features 24 buildings containing 320,000 square feet of space, including two academic buildings, four residential halls, three apartments buildings, a library, recreation center, dining hall and chapel.
For Stanford, the property’s existing use as a school campus and its location on the Peninsula close to public transit and Stanford’s existing main and Redwood City campuses were major factors in its pursuit to purchase the property.
Acquisition of the NDNU campus will mark Stanford’s second significant expansion beyond its main campus in recent years. Its first significant expansion came in 2019, when the university opened its 35-acre Redwood City campus to centralize thousands of university employees whose jobs range from development to finance to information technology.
Stanford Provost Persis Drell said in a statement that the university does not plan to move existing teaching and research activities off of its main campus but the new campus in Belmont would additional space and facilities to “enhance those activities through more regionally-focused work.”
“This is a unique opportunity for Stanford to support higher education in the region, connect with residents in a part of the Peninsula where we have historically not had as much of a presence and invest in expanding our academic mission in service to the community,” Drell said in the statement.
Stanford’s Land, Buildings and Real Estate Department will soon begin a process of planning and designing what the campus will look like after the sale is finalized, though the university expects that process to “take several years,” according to a news release. Any site improvements proposed by Stanford will also need to be approved by the City of Belmont.