Creating a BRAND IDENTITY

If there is no 'old' College of Education and Human Development spilling over into the 'new' College of Education and Human Development, then why didn't this college go through a name change to honor all of the traditions by all the departments? It's interesting that the 'new' CEHD is trying to create a 'brand' as I always have thought that branding animals is a very cruel thing to do. I definitely do not want to be branded!

I remember, during the restructuring process, that everyone was invited to send forward their thoughts to the provost about the new College's name--I think there was a special e-mail address to which such suggestions could be sent-- and that one task force made recommendations about a new name and the other didn't.

I do feel that input was certainly encouraged. The final decision rested with the provost and my sense from checking back with those who were serving in leadership roles at that time is that the provost actually listened very carefully to many suggestions and felt that simply changing the College’s name for the sake of a change did not make much sense, unless a name could be found that better reflected the College’s new identity.

Several people who were dealing with Provost Sullivan directly during that period have said that he thought the existing name did a reasonably good and simple job of capturing the diversity of disciplines in the new College.

Some titles, like “College of Human Science� or “College of Human Development� were seen as less descriptive than the current one and produced more questions than they answered as to what, exactly, this new College would be. Many Colleges caught up in similar restructurings in the U.S. have changed their names, not necessarily creating a clearer, simpler, or more elegant identity.

The reality is that no name would fully honor all that this College is nor would it reflect the heritage of all the units brought together to form it. Anything fully inclusive would probably be so general as to be meaningless to students and others outside the university.

Branding is a difficult term and can lend itself to unfortunate associations. In marketing terms, it simply refers to the way we talk about who we are and what we stand for and how we hope people experience the college.

I would suggest that if we, as individual members of this new college community, can speak positively and enthusiastically about our scholarship, our teaching, our community engagement, and our high standards, mission, and vision, if we remember to speak and refer to this new college in ways that honor its roots and traditions, we will be helping to build an outstanding institution that attracts the very best students, staff, and faculty. If we succeed, will the name be that important 10 years down the road?

I recently was invited to participate in a focus group for the new college branding. During this focus group something was brought up that I keep pondering about. Carlson School of Management has a lot of name recognition. The question of the importance of name recognition was brought up and only pondered upon briefly in our group. Over the past week or so, I've really thought about that. The College of Education and Human Development is very generic. It is even more generic when we abbreviate it to CEHD, where it can easily be lost among the other four-letter abbreviations we use for each department. I don't think this is the way to be noticed. I think the college needs a one word name that would stand out like Carlson. If perhaps if we were the "Anderson" College of Education and Human Development (for lack of a better name), the name "Anderson" (or whatever name that was chosen) would stick out better in people's minds.