Welcome to Muskingum 'University'

As students returned to Muskingum last week, they would have undoubtedly noticed several changes on campus.

One change, if not the most prominent, would have been the 172-year old “college” now being a “university."

“Universities, as the name may suggest, are much more complex institutions [than a college],” said Paul Reichardt the vice president for academic affairs.

Reichardt then said that “with a university, there are many more programs offered, more adult non-traditional students becoming involved and graduate programs to get up and running.”

“Muskingum is much larger, and much more developed and expansive than it was fifty years ago, and as such, was already a university by standards of the State of Ohio,” he said. “The only thing left to do was make it official.”

The first step in transitioning from a college to a university, as noted by Reichardt, was for the administrators of the college to discuss the change with not only staff members, but alumni, graduates and other “members of the [Muskingum] family” to explain why the change was being made.

Next, the Board of Trustees of Muskingum College would take action in order to acquire the necessary legal paperwork. From there, a representative from the college would go to the Secretary of State for Ohio to secure a new charter.

“A main area of focus in this change was the growth of various graduate programs within the campus itself,” Reichardt said.

The next and final steps would be to notify the Ohio Board of Regents and the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association in order to clear the metaphorical red tape, thus making the transition final and official.

“The main disadvantage of the change would be a failure to communicate with the Muskingum ‘family’ and explain why the change was being made,” said Reichardt.
“This could then cause many misconceptions and misunderstandings, as well as a lack of interest with student relations.”

Reichardt, however, felt that Muskingum, got it right.

“By doing it “right,” Muskingum gave itself a “tremendous international advantage, especially in areas of the world where ‘colleges’ would be synonymous with ‘high schools’ in the United States,” said Reichardt.

Reichardt  also mentioned that “community colleges, which could not afford to offer  the larger, four-year Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science degrees that Muskingum could, were dropping the “community” from their names. As a result, four-year colleges across the nation would soon, if not already, become associated with and only with those two-year degrees.”

As arduous the aforementioned process may be, there are many more, smaller adaptations to be made as well.

Muskingum University Bookstore Manager Martin Miller has been busy undertaking such a task by overseeing the selling of older college merchandise to make room for the newer, university goods.

“There is still a significant market for ‘Muskingum College’ merchandise among alumni, so  we will probably sell both products, at least for a while most of the [‘college’ merchandise] was discounted and sold over the summer as we would normally sell our end-of-season merchandise.  We had a number of alumni come in over the summer to buy the ‘College’ merchandise.”

Several students voiced concerns about the transition.

Junior Natalie Krauss was concerned about the possible financial consequences of the change, a notion Senior Chelsea Cellar shared, “Everything [associated with Muskingum] is clearly labeled ‘Muskingum College’ [with examples being signs in the town of New Concord, labels on buses and vans, doorknobs, the logo on the football field and scoreboard, and various guidebooks and calendars].”

Both students shared the belief that the new designation would be seen as prestigious and thus good for the “recruiting” of prospective students overseas.

Reichardt also had a few words for the alumni and graduate students as well.

“Regardless if Muskingum should be known as a college or university, [the alumni and graduate students] should rest assured that despite the larger number of programs offered, the excellent quality of education sought and provided has always, will be, and shall always be the same.”