The Villa Julie College sweatshirt Melissa Betz wore Thursday soon will be vintage.
She was among the hundreds of students, faculty and college officials who packed an auditorium on the Baltimore County campus to hear the announcement of their school?s new name: Stevenson University.
“I?m not too upset. It could have been worse,” said Betz, a rising sophomore and biology and math major.
She and her friend Erin Kulishek, another sophomore, had rooted for Billiart University after the school?s founder, Saint Julie Billiart.
But, in an effort to distance Villa Julie from its all-female, Catholic past, the Board of Trustees voted Wednesday to rename the college after the town where one of the school?s two campuses is located.
“When we did a mailing of 100,000 pieces of mail to mid-Atlantic states to half men and half women, 80 percent of the responses were female and 20 percent were male,” President Kevin Manning said.
“Prospective students were not opening envelopes because they thought it was a women?s college.”
The college was founded in 1947 as a one-year medical secretarial school, split from the School Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur and became secular in 1967, and started admitting men full time in 1972.
Thursday?s announcement, which followed four years of planning, focus groups and speculation, divided students, faculty, staff and alumni.
“Half are really happy about it, and half are upset,” said Dave Nickel, a school security officer.
“I don?t really care, but my daughter graduated from here, and she doesn?t like it because her diploma says ?Villa Julie.? ”
The cost of changing signs, T-shirts, business cards and promotional materials is not yet known, said Brian Shea, a school spokesman.
Villa Julie has more than doubled its undergraduate enrollment this decade and opened a second campus in 2004 in Owings Mills to accommodate its first dormitory.
In addition to reflecting the main campus?s location, the new name also hearkens to Henry Stevenson, a grain merchant who founded the unincorporated community of Stevenson and married Deborah Owings, granddaughter of the founder of Owings Mills.
