The former two-year women's Catholic school in Baltimore County had come a long way, transforming itself into a multiple-campus university with professional graduate programs and a draw beyond Maryland.
But administrators worried that its name - Villa Julie College - didn't match. Years of market research commissioned by the school found that the name Villa Julie stubbornly sounded to prospective students and employers like a single-sex, religiously-affiliated place - even though the now-secular college went co-educational in the 1970s and has expanded beyond its main Stevenson campus to a large parcel in nearby Owings Mills.
"I think Villa Julie was up there with one of the worst college names in the country," said George Dehne, a marketing research consultant in South Carolina who conducted a large study for the campus. "It was a silly name, frankly. It doesn't mean anything to most people, it's hard to remember, and when we tested it, it came out a girls' school."
At a packed meeting room yesterday morning, students, faculty and administrators erupted into sustained applause as a banner was unfurled bearing the new campus moniker: Stevenson University.
Onstage, President Kevin Manning and board of trustees Chairman Kevin Byrnes looked relieved.
"I was overwhelmed at the emotional response," said Byrnes, the president of Provident Bank, afterward. "It's gratifying."
Still, many students and alumni were opposed to the name change, and Manning acknowledged that the process will be "traumatic" for some. "We are going to get some phone calls and letters," he said in an interview. But Manning predicted that the transition to the new brand will be relatively smooth.
"This is not going to be McDaniel," he said, referring to McDaniel College's tumultuous metamorphosis from Western Maryland College in 2002.
McDaniel's board of trustees didn't announce its decision until January of that year, and most of the campus community learned about it from media reports, prompting protest petitions and divisions on campus. Administrators also didn't divulge replacement candidate-names until announcing the selection of McDaniel in May.
Already,here was a Facebook group set up yesterday for Stevenson University, in which students vented about the name change. "I HATE the new name!!" wrote Jeff Clark. "It was my least favorite ... and makes me wanna transfer."
