How the departments of Lynchburg College may be affected by the name change.
April 25, 2018 - As another semester winds down in the city of Lynchburg, Virginia, change lies on the horizon for Lynchburg College.
The summer before the 2018-2019 academic year, Lynchburg College will officially rename itself to the University of Lynchburg. This marks the second time in history that the campus had changed its name, with the first time being in 1919, where it once held the name of Virginia Christian College.
The name change may seem superficial or cosmetic at first, as Lynchburg College is already legally considered a university. However, the change will affect several departments on campus.
According to the document presented on the official Lynchburg College website (hyperlinked above), this change in name will recognize “the purposeful, constructive growth” from the past 114 years. Significant gains to undergraduate and graduate programs, as well as a desire to get more international students involved played large parts in this decision.
Official map showing the three department departments interviewed in this article. A full map may be found here.
As with many changes that occur over time, as is the case with the campus, the name change was not something that came out of the blue. According to Dr. Michael Robinson, the Department Chair of the Communications Department, “We knew the name change process was going on for a while, because they kept soliciting our input. So, the faculty was involved, the students were involved.”
Dr. Robinson continued, “I wasn't really surprised that it happened. Our understanding was, that it kind of was 50-50. There was a lot of talk about whether there were good reasons to do it, there were some good reasons not to do it. There had always been a lot of enthusiasm for changing it.”
“The goal is to do something that improves our enrollment. So in some quarters, particularly internationally, that ‘college’ sounds a little ‘less’ somehow.” Dr. Robinson clarified he has never felt that way, but feels that the name change to University of Lynchburg will invite more international students.
There will no longer be the School of Communication and the Arts. Instead, the arts will be moving underneath the umbrella of “Lynchburg College of Arts and Sciences” as noted by Dr. Cynthia Ramsey.
Communication Studies, meanwhile, will not change much at all, besides becoming part of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. This will include Sociology, Criminology, Political Science, and International Relations.
Graphs showing how the structure of departments will change at Lynchburg.
To help facilitate the spread of information, and to bring knowledge of the change of Lynchburg College to the University of Lynchburg, the Information Technology and Resource center was contacted immediately following the vote that made the change official. The official vote was done by the Board of Trustees, and according to Dr. Ramsey, took place over the course of multiple hours.
On campus, the Information Technology and Resources department is often shortened to ITR, or the IT department. Jackie Almond is the Director of Information, Technology, and Resources, and has echoed the sentiment that with the change to the University of Lynchburg, potential students both in country and abroad would visit the campus without the association that the label ‘college’ might imply.
To some, the name change came with either confusion or resistance, however, to others it offered a few possibilities.
From a financial standpoint: Lynchburg College, soon to be University of Lynchburg, is a tuition based university, which means that the budget that departments have, are based strongly on how many students are brought in for student enrollment and student retention.
Dr. Cynthia Ramsey said in regards to the name change; “I’m very ecstatic! Very glad. I greet - I’m a traditionalist, I appreciate that idea of tradition. But Lynchburg College hasn’t been acting like a ‘college’ for quite some time. We have numerous master degree programs, we have numerous doctorate degree programs. So we’re not that little college or school that we had for hundred plus years. For these last ten years, we’ve expanded our programs at the graduate level, and our online programs at both the graduate and undergraduate level. So why don’t we call ourselves what we are? And we are actually a university, so let’s go.”
By this time next year, Lynchburg College will be transformed. The University of Lynchburg will its doors to the projected amount of new students national and international, as it settles into its new namesake.