UMW signs finally acknowledge university

Mary Washington's most prominent signs being replaced to recognize institution's new status.

Date published: 7/28/2006

By MELISSA NIX

By MELISSA NIX

It's been two years since Mary Washington College became the University of Mary Washington. And despite some promises to the contrary, the most prominent signs around the Fredericksburg campus will no longer bear any reference to Mary Washington College.

The brick sign on the corner of William Street and College Avenue, which bears the old name of the school, is being replaced with one carrying the university's name and logo.

President William Frawley, who replaced William Anderson on July 1, said he is sensitive to the controversy that surrounded the change to university status. However, he inherited a university, he said, and is moving forward accordingly.

At a mid-July board of visitors retreat, Frawley asked if there was a consensus to change the signs.

"The fact that there were going to be new signs is something that had already been decided [before I arrived]," Frawley said. The wording on the signs came out of the retreat discussion, he added.

Frawley said he knew of discussions last spring in which the landscape architect hired to design the signs, William Spell, suggested the new signs read University of Mary Washington, College of Arts and Sciences.

But at the recent retreat, "I had indicated that I thought this is a single university," Frawley said, noting the Fredericksburg campus's activities encompass all of the university.

"Planning, admissions, finance, operations--they are all coordinated out of here. This is where the University of Mary Washington, in its fullest extent, is located. This doesn't devalue Stafford or the College of Arts and Sciences, it's just accurate," he said.

The move to change the name of the school itself was controversial. Anderson, the former president, led the charge.

Administrators initially said the name "University of Mary Washington" would be an umbrella linking the school's undergraduate campus in Fredericksburg and the graduate school in Stafford.

In a memo Anderson circulated to the Mary Washington community in 2001, he wrote:

'I had indicated that I thought this is a single university.' William Frawley New president, University of Mary Washington

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Date published: 7/28/2006