College Rebranding Itself

Campus Connection: MATC rebranding itself as Madison College
Todd Finkelmeyer  Posted: Tuesday, October 27, 2009 12:45 pm
Cap Times.com

The official name of the school will remain Madison Area Technical College.

The decision to change the nickname is rooted in the fact that Milwaukee Area Technical College also uses the MATC acronym when referring to itself. When the president of Milwaukee Area Technical College was fired earlier this year after he was cited for drunken driving in February, college officials in Madison were concerned about headlines proclaiming, "MATC president fired."

Perhaps more of a concern to those attempting to find information about MATC is that the Milwaukee school uses the www.matc.edu web address, while Madison's MATC uses the more clunky www.matcmadison.edu.

"We have a high name awareness in Madison," said Walleser. "But when our prospective students or employees go to look us up on the web, they often type in 'matc.edu,' and they get Milwaukee Area Technical College. It takes people a while to figure out what's going on, and it's confusing. That's often someone's first experience with us and first visit with us, and we would like people to not be confused about who we are."

Madison Area Technical College officials will give a presentation about this rebranding plan -- and also unveil a new logo -- to the MATC District Board at a meeting Wednesday at 4:30 p.m. This presentation will take place in room 122 of MATC's Truax campus, 3550 Anderson Street. Although school officials are hoping for the board's endorsement and will welcome feedback, the plan to rebrand the school does not need formal board approval.

If the MATC Board expresses no major misgivings about the new nickname and logo, Walleser said the college would start with a "soft rollout" of its rebranding efforts in the near future. The school then would hope to have a new web address, signage and all aspects of the rebranding effort fully implemented for the start of the 2010-11 academic year.

The MATC Board and school administrators considered changing the official name of the school over the summer, but ultimately decided instead to move forward with plans to rebrand the college with a different street name and logo.

"When people Google 'MATC' and Milwaukee Area Technical College comes up, that can be a problem," said Noel Radomski, a member of the MATC Board who is director of the Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education, a higher education think tank based on the UW-Madison campus. "So this is an important issue to look at."

MATC officials said they are not overly concerned with people getting Madison College confused with UW-Madison.

"We talked about that issue, but the university is a very distinct institution," said Walleser. "We're a community and technical college, and we feel (Madison College) appropriately speaks to who we are. It's not a new name, it's just creating a nickname that more clearly communicates what we do and what we're about."

The college has changed its name six times over the years -- most recently in 1993 from Madison Area Vocational, Technical and Adult Education District No. 4. Walleser said Madison has been a part of the school's name in some way since 1937.

The design of a new logo for the school was done by Mark Schmitz, an MATC graduate who owns the visual branding firm ZD Studios. The cost for the redesign was $25,000. The logo currently being used was developed in 1993.

School officials said they won't make the new logo available for publication until after Wednesday's meeting with the MATC Board.