The College of Education recently announced its name change to the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
This college has been trying to approve the change of this name for two to three years, and it finally changed its name as of.
Nathan Roberts is a professor in Educational Leadership Foundations, and he was one of the colleagues that was a part of the name change.
Roberts explained the importance of human development within the new name of the college.
“The out-of-state people didn’t understand or recognize counselor education. They had to keep writing letters and explaining what the program was so that they could get certified in Louisiana,” Roberts said.
Another reason for the change was because the original name did not include kinesiology majors, and some people had difficulty finding their major.
Roberts also added that the new name better fits what the majors in the college do.
“It makes more sense to call it the College of Education and Human Development, because that’s what everybody does. The counseling people are bettering the mental health of most folks, and kinesiology is the physical health, which is all about human development, human growth,” Roberts said. “So that was a change that we wanted to go, that makes it more inclusive so that everybody feels like I’m a part of that college.”
After they realized what they wanted the name of their department to be, they went through the process of getting the name approved.
“The university here was fine with that change then we had to go through the process with the state,” Roberts said.
Roberts continued, saying, “We had to go through the Board of Supervisors and the Board of Regents to get approval for the name change which we didn’t have any issues with and they didn’t either.”
Although there weren’t any issues within the process of approval, the waiting period was why it took awhile for the name to officially change.
“Internally, that took another six months because when we changed the name, it impacted everything in the catalog,” Roberts said.
Roberts continued by explaining how the change of their name would affect students who would be graduating within the department.
“Everything online, and all of our degrees suddenly changed. You’re no longer getting a degree in the College of Education. You’re getting a degree in the College of Education and Human Development,” Roberts said. “So all the codes and all the stuff behind the scenes had to be changed. And that took awhile for the system to be able to make all those adjustments.”
Roberts reassured that students who have been a part of this department before the name change would still be aligned with their courses for their degree.
“It doesn’t impact anything. The only catalog changes is names, and that was an internal thing that the university had to do in the computer system, but the requirements in kinesiology didn’t change, the requirements in counseling didn’t change, unless it was a regular adjustment in the programming, but changing the name didn’t do anything for that,” Roberts said.