The board of Castleton State College voted unanimously Thursday to change the school’s name to Castleton University. The change makes Castleton the state's second public university.
University president Dave Wolk said the change reflects the institution that Castleton is becoming. Wolk said growth in the number of graduate programs and students, Castleton’s international recruitment efforts and its expanding presence around Vermont fit better with the “university” name.
“It reflects who we are as well as who we aspire to be,” Wolk said.
He also said the new name will help international recruitment by removing confusion around the word “college.”
“’University’ in other countries connotes higher education,” he said. “Colleges in many countries are equivalent to high schools. So this is not true with everyone, but certainly with us in our early ventures to recruit international students it’s helpful to have university status.”
Wolk said the new name won’t change the way Castleton interacts with the state or federal government, but it could help with grant funding.
The student experience, he said, won’t change.
“It will be exactly the same,” he said. “We’ll have the same kind of extended-family, personalized, relationship-based education where everybody knows your name, and the actual undergraduate experience on campus will stay the same.”
