But some students were more sanguine about finding themselves at Stevenson U. "Now all my VJC shirts are vintage!" said Ken Abel. "Awesome."
Manning said that Villa Julie's decision to employ a years-long transparent process should prevent even detractors from feeling disenfranchised. The university shared the fruits of its research and analysis on the campus Web site and in four mailings to 20,000 community members over the years.
"It's definitely part of the strategy," said Scott McBride of Towson-based HCM Marketing Research, which conducted focus groups and interviews to help the trustees pick a winning name from among the finalists. "Getting so much feedback, internally, and from so many different groups."
Ultimately, Stevenson University tested best among almost all of the constituent groups surveyed: among them prospective students, their parents, business leaders and high school guidance counselors.
"Stevenson sounded like a name with prestige, like it had been around for a while," McBride said.
It also had the virtue of lacking any feminine connotation. McBride said campus officials were surprised to discover that about half of high school guidance counselors surveyed believed Villa Julie was a single-sex institution. Even 40 percent of local business executives thought it was still an all-female college, according to studies.
That is hurting student recruitment, particularly outside of Maryland, said Manning. About 70 percent of Villa Julie undergraduates are female.
The new university will retain its old name in one of its main undergraduate divisions, now called the Villa Julie College of Arts and Sciences. Manning said he expected the rebranding - changing campus signage, stationary and so forth - to take 12 to 18 months.
Students graduating in December and next May will have the option of receiving Villa Julie or Stevenson diplomas, and all alumni will be offered replacement Stevenson University diplomas, officials said. The school plans to apply for the Web domain stevenson.edu, and will continue to use vjc.edu in the meantime, said spokesman Brian Shea.
Unlike McDaniel, which is named for former Western Maryland College student, professor, administrator and trustee William Roberts McDaniel, the Stevenson name requires little explanation.
The most common approach to naming a college is after its location, Manning told the audience yesterday. "Oxford is in Oxford, Princeton is in Princeton," he said. "We thought that made sense here."
Plus, there is a felicitous connection between the name and Owings Mills.The founder of the now-affluent Stevenson neighborhood was Henry Stevenson, a Baltimore grain merchant who married the granddaughter of the Owings Mill founder.
Villa Julie was founded in 1947 as a school for medical secretaries and became independent of the Catholic Church in 1967.
It opened its doors to men in 1972 and began offering four-year degrees in 1984.
gadi.dechter@baltsun.com
