Leanna Byrne | Editor
This Wednesday, the governing body of Trinity College will decide on the proposed name change of ‘Trinity College Dublin’ to ‘Trinity College, the University of Dublin’ according to a report in yesterday’s Sunday Business Post.
The rebranding is expected to face roadblocks as documents circulated to the members of the Board have shown that a change in name will have a detrimental impact on bibliometric inputs into college and university rankings, which was one of the major concerns voiced by the Fellows in January. The document further recommended that the name ‘Trinity College Dublin’ should be retained on Trinity publications and to “reinforce its use by Trinity authors” as a change in name would mean that databases would find it difficult to find their publications. This would have a considerable effect on the University World Rankings as colleges are rated on the amounumber of citations they produce.
The name change comes as part of the university’s recent rebranding exercise, known as the ‘Identity Initiative
The Identity Initiative was commissioned through the university’s current strategic plan as an “exercise in self-reflection” by examining how Trinity is perceived by internal and external audiences. The aim of the initiative is to “strengthen their existing identity to serve the academic mission and to raise funds in competitive research and philanthropy”.
Since the beginning of the process in August, students and academics have been wary about the rebranding process. In November, the rebranding exercise had to rebrand itself to the ‘Identity Initiative’ as corporate terminology did not resonate well within students and staff.
Among many other proposals, one of the ways in which the initiative claim will help achieve a stronger brand is to eliminate all variations of the words used to identify the university to conform to one name. The university is currently referred to as ‘Trinity College’, ‘Trinity College Dublin’, ‘the University of Dublin’, ‘Dublin University’, and ‘TCD’ among others.
At a meeting of the governing body on January 22nd, the Identity Initiative presented the findings of their professional perception research that was carried out among staff, students and the general public. Despite ‘Trinity College Dublin’ being the prefered name in the surveys among students and staff, the steering group overseeing the Identity Initiative have chosen ‘Trinity College, the University of Dublin’ to be put through the governing body board meeting. The meeting further noted that the single word, ‘Trinity’ be used as the abbreviated version.
This change is expected to highlight that Trinity is a university, not a ‘college’ when persuading international students to come to our shores. In a series of 23 interviews conducted in some of Trinity’s key markets abroad, one trend that emerged was that the word ‘college’ can be construed as a secondary school or community college particularly in the US and Asia.
At last Council, Trinity College Students’ Union Council voted to reject the recommendations put forward at the next Board meeting and not to support changes to the existing name. The motion was put forward in support of the memorandum sent to the Provost, Patrick Prendergast, from the Fellows stating that they do not believe a “single name can work” in all contexts.
Speaking to The Sunday Business Post, the Chair of the Fellows, Dr Eoin O’Dell, welcomed the support coming from the students and said: “I am delighted that the SU Council has approved our memorandum and I hope it will have a positive influence on discussions on Wednesday.”
Photo by Gearóid Gibbs.
