By MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
Missouri Western State University is changing its name. . . sort of
The university will begin embracing a new name it’s commonly referred to within the community as, adopting MoWest as the way the university will be identified.
President Elizabeth Kennedy says as they saw more and more people referring to the university as MoWest, they felt it was time to embrace it.
“Let’s be the university of the community because that’s our goal, we want to make this university town and become more and more embedded into the community, so it’s really exciting for us and I so appreciate all the folks we had come out and help us celebrate today,” Kennedy tells reporters. “And you’re going to see MoWest now, it’s going to be in the community, it’s going to be on TV, it’s going to be in newspapers.”
Kennedy says it’s the universities responsibility to serve the region, and by embracing the name, it sort of puts them on a level playing field
“So we’re saying yes this is who we are and we anticipate having more interactions, we’ll be having campaigns to be pushing our logo out more and more into the community, flags, yard signs, those kinds of things, to really make the community look black and gold, to look like MoWest, and I think that’s an excellent way,” Kennedy explains. “We all know education is the key to economic prosperity, and that’s what we’re here to do help our region with that.”
Kennedy says she hopes to see a tangible impact from the name change, saying she knows people value the university with words
“But I want to see black and gold signs, the flags, I want to see black and gold T shirts at the K through 12 and amongst the population, I want to see more people at our football games, at our basketball games, at our tennis matches, and lacrosse,” Kennedy says. “I want the people to really value what we’re doing here, not only for education, but as a community benefit.”
The university will still formally go by Missouri Western State University for things such as diplomas and transcripts, but everything else will be MoWest.
Along with the rebranded name will come a new logo. While the Griffon is still there, it has been modified slightly with cleaner lines and sharper edges.
You can follow Matt on X @KfeqMatt and St. Joseph Post @StJosephPost.
