Joan Develin Coley has achieved many firsts at McDaniel College: first female academic dean, first female provost, first female president and first president promoted from faculty ranks.
She also was the first president to change the college?s name ? something that upsets some alumni five years later.
“Many alumni didn?t want the name of their alma mater to change,” Coley said Wednesday in her office on the Westminster campus in Carroll County.
“I had the shortest honeymoon” of many college presidents, she said, because she received hundreds of angry letters.
Officials had weighed the decision for five decades, but Coley took a risk and enacted the new name months after taking office in 2001.
Formerly Western Maryland College, the small, private college originally was named after Western Maryland Railroad, because the college board of trustees? first chairman in 1867 was president of the railroad.
The railroad is now defunct and the name suggested the wrong geographic location ? Carroll County is in central Maryland ? and sounded like a public university, Coley said.
“If you want to be competitive, you can?t have a name that misrepresents you,” she said.
Coley underscored the positive results of the name change: Student applications and donations continue to increase, due in part, to the McDaniel name, which was selected in honor of a former student and faculty member.
More changes coming to McDaniel include: a new fitness center, a Center for the Study of Aging and a Center for Faculty Excellence.
