Now that Massachusetts has added a law school to its state university system, prior graduates of Southern New England School of Law are eagerly seeking new JD diplomas showing that they graduated from UMass-Dartmouth law. Apparently, there is history for UMass reissuing old unbranded diplomas with the new UMass monniker. In 1991, UMass acquired the Southeastern Massachusetts University and renamed the institution UMass-Dartmouth. The school issued SMU grads replacement diplomas featuring the new school name.
Administrators at UMass are still deciding whether to do the same for SNESL grads, but apparently SNESL administrators are a bit more gung ho. According to this news report,
A SNESL administrator told alumni in an e-mail earlier this month that she was “fairly certain that replacement diplomas will become available....SNESL told alumni that the new school could be referred to on resumes as “Southern New England School of Law (nka University of Massachusetts School of Law)” or University of Massachusetts School of Law (aka Southern New England School of Law).”
This may be the first moment when UMass administrators have to decide whether they really want to own more than SNESL's infrastructure. Alumni would surely be thrilled to have new diplomas - especially once UMass snags ABA approval. But it's not clear that this move would be good either for the UMass brand, or for future graduates of the merged schools.
Comments