Notre Dame Jerusalem, in partnership with Notre Dame’s Office of Pre-College Programs, welcomed its first cohort of students to the ADAM Pre-College Gap Year Program this September, following a year of recruitment, partnership-building, and curriculum development.
The program launched with a full induction day, bringing the inaugural cohort of 23 students together with Notre Dame Jerusalem leadership, faculty, and program partners.
“I may be wrong, and you may be right, and by an effort we may get nearer to the truth.”
Opening the orientation, Daniel Schwake, director of Notre Dame Jerusalem, shared this quote from Karl Popper to frame the upcoming year. He encouraged the students to question their assumptions, listen to different perspectives, and treat learning as a process of getting closer to the truth rather than arriving at it.
ADAM is built around a three-phase structure. The first phase, Discover Your Passion, helps students explore their interests through courses in critical thinking, leadership, philosophy, and university preparedness, while also including site visits to leading academic institutions and companies. The second, Strategic Academic Pathways, connects student interests and strengths to university and career choices. The third, Advanced Skill-Building, prepares them for university through standardized test preparation, intensive Hebrew-language training, and courses in coding and responsible computing.
Later in the day, Yara Abdeen, associate director of academic programming, spoke to the participants about the words printed on their T-shirts: “Do Something Extraordinary.” She explained to the students that these words are more than a slogan: they are an invitation to dream bigger, ask difficult questions, discover their passions, and imagine new possibilities for themselves. She connected this to a question at the heart of the Notre Dame tradition: “What would you fight for?”, asking students to reflect not only on what they want to achieve, but what kind of people they want to become.
As the first cohort begins this journey, ADAM aims to create more than a bridge between high school and university. It is a year for participants to explore their passions, challenge their assumptions, develop new skills, and begin imagining the kind of future they want to build. The journey has only just begun, and we look forward to seeing where their questions, curiosity, and ambitions will lead them.
Learn more about the ADAM Pre-College Gap Year Program here.
Originally published by at jerusalem.nd.edu on September 29, 2026.