We just received word from Admissions Marketing Report that the Missouri S&T logo won a bronze award in the Logo/Letterhead Design category of the 23rd Annual Admissions Advertising Awards.
For some reason, AMR placed us in the category of schools with 10,000-19,999 students, when we should have been in the category of 5,000-9,999 students. But that's OK. We happily accept this award and thank everyone who helped to create the logo by providing their input. That includes many of you readers, who readily shared your thoughts when we first presented concepts last summer, and continued to share your ideas and opinions throughout the process, even up to the official unveiling last September. Thanks also to Ed Sirianno and his team at Creative Communications Associates, who worked with us in developing the symbol.
Congrats Missouri S&T! I've enjoyed following your transformation from old school to new! Well deserved!
I was wondering after the big Missouri S&T name change if there is any feedback or positive results to report?
Well, I have to admit that I never was (and I am still not) a supporter of the name change. However, given the name that we had to accept, I thought the logo was well-designed. And I'm glad to see that the new name has now been recognized on some level, no matter how inconspicuous these AMR results might be.
Andrew, my next questions are a fair bit off-topic from the current conversation, but they pertain to many of the discussions held last year as part of the namechange blog.
Part of the push for the name change was to help then-UMR become more widely recognizable, thus assisting the University in its new goal of becoming "one of the nation’s top five technological research universities by 2010." Since the namechange blog is apparently coming to an end, is there somewhere on MST's webpage (or elsewhere online) where we can track the progress of the other strategies that were implemented and/or proposed? Also, is there somewhere we can track MST's improvement in the public eye (ie.- how far away are we from becoming a top-5 university)? At the time that the decision to change the name was made, no published metric existed to rate the applicable schools, as defined by the Chancellor.
Thanks in advance for your help and info. And thanks again for your blogging efforts.
Thanks, everyone, for the comments. Allow me to respond:
Rachel - Most of the feedback our office has received about the name change has been anecdotal and mixed. I haven't been keeping track of positive vs. negative comments. I hear both. Most of the positive comments come in face-to-face conversations with alumni, students and community leaders. Most of the negative comments come via email from alumni or students, forwarded to me from other campus departments.
I hope to be able to conduct some name recognition market research in a year or so, after the name has had some time to seep into the public consciousness.
Justin - Many of the issues you allude to are addressed in the university's strategic plan, which is under the direction of Provost Warren K. Wray. From his website (http://provost.mst.edu/) is a link to the university's strategic plan (in PDF format). On the final page of the strategic plan, you'll find a list of all technological research universities and the metrics by which we are to measure ourselves against them. It's a detailed list of criteria, and Provost Wray has developed a method for calculating our rank based on all of this criteria. I need to contact Provost Wray about publicizing this information, because I know that many readers of this blog (and many other alumni) are interested in knowing where we stand.
Great to see the reward of the new logo after the name change. Is this also explicited in a market value?
I must say, the logo is a good example for universities here in Europe...