Green River Community College is dropping the \u201ccommunity\u201d from its name, choosing to follow schools like Highline, South Seattle and Bellevue colleges.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The new name reflects the college\u2019s increased focus on four-year possibilities through three new bachelor\u2019s of applied sciences programs: two in information technology and one in marketing. The three programs are the first four-year programs that have been offered at Green River ever since it was founded in 1965.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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Green River President Eileen Ely did not return phone calls for comment on the name change, instead deferring questions to new communications director Allison Friedly.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n While there\u2019s no timeline for implementing the name change, Friedly said, the school will work with committees to transition the college over to the new branding.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n Friedly said that the name change is in line with a host of other colleges in the country, and that Green River will be the 19th community college in Washington to make the change.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n According to Friedly, the rebranding effort hopes to lend <\/span>more legitimacy to the degrees from the school, including its new four-year degrees.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cA bachelor\u2019s degree from a community college doesn\u2019t receive as much credence as a bachelor\u2019s degree from a university,\u201d Friedly said.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the name,\u201d she said, \u201cit doesn\u2019t change the mission.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n The name change hasn\u2019t been received positively by everyone at the school. In a recent opinion piece submitted to the Reporter, teacher Stephen Kinholt criticized the college\u2019s choice to make the decision without sharing campus-wide polls on the change.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n Kinholt spoke for a side of the school that worries about losing the \u201ccommunity\u201d feeling by eliminating the word from the college\u2019s name.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cTo me, we\u2019re giving up a lot more than we\u2019re getting back,\u201d Kinholt said. \u201cThere\u2019s no reason that we can\u2019t have these four-year degrees and not have the community name.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n He says that community colleges, by name, are a unique institution in the world that fill a very specific and important niche. By removing the name community, Kinholt says that it changes the nature of the school and orients it more toward students from outside of the area.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cIt conveys a sense of the community,\u201d Kinholt said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n He was also frustrated with college officials for not notifying faculty of the name change, and only just now are communicating the change.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think a lot of the people in the community know. The only place I saw it was in the student school newspaper,\u201d Kinholt said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Matt Swenson, college grant director, said that the name change won\u2019t affect grant funding for the school because the name change won\u2019t affect the college\u2019s category in public education.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no immediate evidence that it will have any significant impact either way,\u201d Swenson said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Swenson said that his office will continue to look into how the name change could affect grant funding.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/span><\/div>\n<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Green River Community College is dropping the \u201ccommunity\u201d from its name, choosing to follow schools like Highline, South Seattle and Bellevue colleges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":213,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-23131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23131"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/213"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23131\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23131"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=23131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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