Villa Julie College suffers from an identity crisis. The Baltimore County school, looking to distance itself from its Roman Catholic roots, is considering changing its name.
“There is strong evidence that we are turning off a lot of our prospective students because they assume we are Catholic women?s college,” said Paul Lack, executive vice president for academic affairs and dean.
The 60-year-old college separated from the Catholic church in 1967 and went co-educational in 1972. In the past decade, the number of students has doubled to 3,000, and the school opened a second campus in Owings Mills to complement its original campus in Greenspring Valley in Stevenson.
More changes are to come.
The Board of Trustees voted in May to change the name from Villa Julie College, named after Saint Julie Billiart, founder of the Sisters of Notre Dame, to Villa Julie University to reflect the addition of graduate programs.
The university then asked students, faculty and alumni to offer suggestions online, resulting in pushes for Stevenson University, Greenspring Valley University and Key University, among others.
The board, which meets next in November, must still vote on whether to change name.
“We are not changing it overnight and we will involve constituents because it?s an emotional issue for many,” said Glenda LeGendre, vice president for marketing and public relations.
Joan Develin Coley knows how hard it is to rename a school. The president of McDaniel College in Westminster still receives letters from angry alumni six years after she pushed to drop the name Western Maryland College.
The railroad it was named after is now defunct, and the name suggested the wrong geographic location ? Carroll County is in central Maryland ? and sounded like a public university, she said.
“If you want to be competitive, you can?t have a name that misrepresents you,” she said.
Former Villa Julie student Chris Sanders said he would prefer the original name.
“I would have never known that it was an all-girls Catholic school except they told me at orientation,” he said.
“If they would just stop telling people, it would slowly go away.”
Join the discussion and take our poll in today’s examiNation Baltimore: How do you feel about Villa Julie College changing its name?
