The College of Liberal Studies is going to make a name change to the College of Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities, and the College of Art and Communication, will be shifting to the School of Visual and Performing Arts officially on July 1, 2019.  

“It is a title change, because we want to better articulate to students, to the public, and to potential students’ what majors and departments are within our college,” said Interim Dean, Kimberly Vogt. 

 Vogt continued to explain that the name ‘College of Liberal Studies,’ is not descriptive enough for individuals to fully comprehend what it means. The name change is going to better define to the public what departments are in the college.  

“We are talking about arts, which is music, theater, art. We are talking about social sciences, which are psychology, sociology, political science, public administration, ethnic and racial studies, women gender studies, communication studies, archeology and anthropology. Then the humanities are English, philosophy, history and global cultures and languages,” said Vogt.  

According to Vogt, this change is strictly a name change. It will not affect students credit wise within their major. The only change students may see are communication studies majors, because they are currently part of the School of Arts and Communication. Due to this change, they will now be a part of the Social Sciences.  

“It will do nothing for their degree or anything like that. It is just that it is a different configuration of the different departments,” said Vogt. She noted that the only change students should see is the change of title of their transcripts.  

Conversations within the College of Liberal Studies prompted the name change. The conversation of modifying the name has been being talked about since 2015, according to Interim Associate Dean, Marie Moeller.  

“These conversations have been ongoing for a really long time. For this process, some of the people who are on the task force previously responded to a call of participation in spring 2016. Those folks for the year did research of UW system and higher education branding research. We then surveyed 253 of our faculty to see how they best identified within that location,” said Moeller.  

Vogt explained that the committee came up with several variations of viable options for a new title. They asked faculty members what they believed the new name should be and the College of Arts, Social Science, and Humanities is what was officially chosen. 

The new name is comparable to other institutions who also have a similar title. “You have anything from Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at UW-Green Bay, Arts, Communications, Humanities, and Social Sciences at UW-Stout,” continued Moeller 

Moeller concluded, “We are excited about the name change and we are looking forward about the opportunities it will bring to students.”