TL;DR The title of your student-serving office should have a straight-forward, descriptive name that clearly indicates to students what you can offer them.
Years ago, some staffing units in an education college were shuffling office locations. The student services, such as academic advising, were placed together in one office suite in the building. This collective of services decided they needed a name now that they were all located together. Since they shared this new office location, they named their new hub for varying student services… “Suite 201.”
“Suite 201” was the name put on their website. “Suite 201” was printed on their posters and flyers and “Suite 201” was the header in the email announcements to their education students about upcoming deadlines and opportunities.
Why am I telling this story? Because “Suite 201” means nothing. In the name of not choosing something “boring” this group of people chose an empty name. Presumably, they thought it would catch someone’s attention or be ‘memorable’ because it was different. But students did not know why they should go to “Suite 201,” what to find here, or how to access services provided by this office.
I’ve seen this happen most often when multiple offices are merged and need a new grouped name. On one such occasion someone proposed they name the group of student services “The Collective.”
Ask yourself: “If I didn’t know about this office, would this name give me an idea of what they could help me with?”
If you’re trying to be clever, then people will need to be clever to figure out what you are offering them. Don’t make people work for it or guess. Because they won’t. They will just move on.
You are not Google. Your college student service office title will not become a household name. Help students find you so you can help them.
You want your office to have a cool acronym... so that you can use it as the name. You feel like you’re cheating the system and beating the game, but you’re committing the transgressions mentioned above. Stop trying to be cool. “The CARS” does not tell me that you are the ‘Center for Agricultural Resilience and Sustainability’. It leads me in a different direction entirely. If you insist on having an acronym that spells a word, please make it relevant to your unit. Use acronyms wisely, and let people adopt them later... after they have learned your name and know what you are about.
Post photo by Jens Johnsson from Pexels