Necessary Roughness

A Name Change for UMR?
October 10th, 2006 at 9:47 pm

The Kansas City Star reports that my alma mater, the University of Missouri-Rolla, is considering a name change. In its current form UMR is really two schools, UMR and the Missouri School of Mines.

On Monday, UMR Chancellor John F. Carney suggested the school find a name that better reflects UMR’s role as a technological research institution focused on engineering, technology and science. The University of Missouri Board of Curators must approve any name change.

I have not seen many rebranding initiatives that actually gain market or customer share. Often there is a lot of confusion among the employees. In the case of colleges that rely a lot on their alumni, this signals a break with the past that may not be such a good idea. Usually a lot of money is spent on consultations, four or five “bad” choices are placed alongside the one “good” choice that higher-ups had in mind all along, and everyone votes for the “good” one.

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3 Responses to “A Name Change for UMR?”

1. samuelmpowell Says:
   October 10th, 2006 at 10:42 pm

   Even if they change their name I’ll still make fun of UMR. (My mom works for the dean’s office for the University of Missouri-Columbia College of Engineering). Go Tigers!

2. 
   Dan Says:
   October 10th, 2006 at 10:59 pm

   There’s a funny yet slightly off-color joke about the UM schools that involves taking the letters from the cities and putting them at the front. It doesn’t quite work with UMKC, though.

3. SGardner Says:
   October 13th, 2006 at 5:05 pm

   I graduated from UMR in 1990 and think that the name change from Missouri School of Mines was the biggest mistake they could have made. A School of Mines has name recognition. UMR is just one campus of four. I live in Colorado now and tell people that I graduated from the Missouri School of Mines. I think calling UMR Missouri’s Premier Technological University is a joke. Nobody anywhere in the country is going to have any recognition for University of Missouri-Rolla. Take it back to School of Mines whether there’s any mining engineering going on there or not.