Chip,
I work in non-profit publications, but this is a question that reporters at regular news outlets may encounter.
It seems there’s a trend in colleges and universities changing their names.
Colleges become universities or some change their names entirely. This has happened probably a half-dozen times in the state where I work in the past 10 years.
How do we refer to this when we’re listing in bio information that someone graduated from a particular school, but that school’s name has been changed?
On one hand, it’s more correct to say that they graduated from the school under its previous name because that’s on their diploma. But on the other, after a few years the public starts to forget that Truman State University used to be Northeast Missouri State, or that Southwest Missouri State is now Missouri State.
Rachel Webb
Dear Rachel,
My wife sympathizes. In 1980, Kathy earned her bachelor of arts degree from Roger Williams College in Bristol, Rhode Island.
In 1992, the school changed its named to Roger Williams University. So what’s the name of her alma mater?
For that matter, what about graduates of Roger Williams Junior College, so named in 1956 when the state chartered it as a two-year degree-granting institution.
The natural destination for Rachel’s question: The Chronicle of Higher Education. The weekly newspaper and its Web site are the definitive source for news, info and job openings within academe — “considered,” as one writer put it, “the Wall Street Journal of higher education.”
I got in touch with Alexander Kafka, a senior editor and friend, who deftly edited a piece of mine when a corporate takeover swallowed the publisher of my journalism textbook.
Alex replied: “I think we go with an ‘X University, which was at the time Y College’ sort of approach.”
To nail it down, Alex put me in touch with Mitch Gerber, the Chronicle’s senior editor for copy, and, he said, “a brilliant source on such matters — in fact, in almost all matters.”
“We don’t have a formal rule for the sort of situation you describe,” Gerber e-mailed me. “But common sense dictates that we do something along the lines of what Alex suggests: perhaps, ‘Joe Smith taught at Roger Williams College, since renamed Roger Williams University,’ for brevity.”
In doing so, we follow the logic of a rule we’ve set for changed place names; for example, “Kolkata, India,” but on first reference we add “, formerly Calcutta.”
Consistency rules in matters of style; it’s helpful to know that common sense reigns as well.
I found a way to put the rule into practice when I tried to find out why schools changed their names. Here’s what I discovered:
The metamorphoses of junior colleges into colleges and universities reflect changes:
- in funding sources
- to mark the kickoff of fundraising,
- in desire to change the school’s brand
Those were the elements described in a 2002 story in The Towerlight, campus newspaper for Towson University, formerly Towson State University, five years after its name change.
So now we know when Kathy wins the Nobel Prize for Literature, her bio will read “Ms. Fair graduated in 1980 from Roger Williams College, since renamed Roger Williams University, in Bristol, Rhode Island.”
Thanks for asking,
Chip
