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Dixie State University Name Change Committee And Board Of Trustees Propose New Name

Bailey Chism

Dixie State University in Saint George, Utah, continues the conversation to remove “Dixie” from their name.

DSU’s Name Recommendation Committee and Board of Trustees proposed changing the institution’s name to Utah Tech University. Jordon Sharp, DSU’s Vice President of Marketing and Communication, says the name must now be approved by the Utah Board of Higher Education for DSU to move forward with the rebranding process. 

“The Utah Board will vote sometime in between now, probably now, October, or early November  and then it will go to the state after that,” Sharp said.

If the Utah Board of Higher Education approves the new name, they expect for the State’s final consensus to be given by Spring 2022.

Sharp said it’s important to note that selecting DSU’s new name was not a popularity contest; it took a lot of data analyzing from a proposed-name survey and several other data collecting methods to select a final name that would benefit the institution’s future and polytechnic-centered mission. 

Most focus groups from the institution recommended using “Utah” in the final name-change after their study.

Sharp said they initially had a problem trying to create a name that included the word “Utah” since so many universities throughout the state already include the word within their name, such as Utah State, the University of Utah, and Southern Utah University.

“Utah really needed something else in order to have [the word] “Utah,” and the perfect fit was to share our new mission, which is a polytechnic mission, which is something our state doesn’t have, our region doesn’t have. There’s not a polytechnic or technological university in our state.”

The university will potentially go by “Utah Tech” just like other well-known universities such as Texas Tech or Virginia Tech, Sharp said.