oldtimer said:
What struck me about the letter was the name and logo change. It's now "Case School of Medicine". I'm glad they changed it because the former name was too long.
The name change has been something of a big deal here in Cleveland over the past year. It's not just the medical school, of course. The concern among those people who concern themselves with such things is that the name was too long and failed to conjure up any name recognition at all. I did my undergrad (and post-bacc) work at CWRU, and I have to tell you that the most common response from people who were not from cleveland was "is that a military school". In keeping with the trend to shorted names (my old lawfirm cut one of its names out - so did the biggest law firm in the world, which happens to be based here in Cleveland) CWRU decided to change the name and the logo to just "Case". And then in much smaller letters below "Case Western Reserve University".
Doesn't seem like a big deal, but it IS. CWRU actually consisted of two totally independant and seperate universities up until 1967, Case Institute of Technology and Western Reserve University. Western Reserve itself consisted of a few colleged such as "Adelbert College" and Flora Stone Mather College". Prior to confederation in 1967, Western Reserve University was like any other full fledged university, consisting of departments in Chemistry, Physics, Literature, etc. It was also the home of the professional schools, including the Medical School (then called, Western Reserve University School of Medicine, I think) and the law school. Case Institute of Technology consisted mainly of engineering departments, but I
think that it also had a somewhat abbreviated compliment of the traditionla liberal arts departments as well. NOt sure about this part.
In any event, the two institutions came together in 1967 into one university, Case Western Reserve University ("with a tradition of excellence even longer than our name
😉 ). I'm not sure what the dynamic was like between 1967 and the early 1990's, but my impression was that it was a good one. However, when I started school in 1992 there had been in place (for how long, i do not know) two seperate "core" curriculums. The "Case Core" was for science majors who intended on getting a BS (any of the natural sciences or engineering). This "core" consisted of three semesters of the calculus based physics, a year of calculus (maybe 3 semester, I don't recall) and a host of other "gut" science courses that all BS students needed to take. The "Reserve Core" consisted of core classes needed to be taken by BA students (natural sciences as well as all the liberal arts majors). This core was, ahem, less rigorous. When I was there, those people who were taking the "reserve core" and therefore were likely to be liberal arts majors were called "reservies" or whatnot and it did not take long to realize that this was a rather normative term to say the least.
In any event, up until 1994, or so, any student getting a BS (whether engineering or natural sciences) got thier degree from the "Case school of science and engineering". At the same time, BA's got thier degree from the "School of Arts and Sciences".
To get a good sense of how people felt about this, I'll use my ex-girlfriend as an example - here story is illustrative of the dynamic then prevelant. When she started at CWRU in 1991 (or so) she was on her way to a BS in Biology (she was premed), and therefore took the "Case Core". However, in 1994 the university changed the name from "Case School of science and engineering" to the "Case school of engineering". As result, ALL BS's students would now get thier degrees from the "School of Arts and Sciences". You never saw so much bitching and moaning in your life. The very idea that a BS biology degree ought to come from the same degree granting college as a psychology BA was frankly repugnant. All these natural science BS students were now, essentially, "reservies". Oh the humanity.
Anyway, as I have suggested, there was (and is) a sort of two-tiered hierarchy among students at Case that as far as I can tell (since I did my post-bacc there) still existed. When the University decided (for all intents and purposes to lop off the "Western Reserve" part of the name, more than a few Western Reserve graduates got pretty pissed off. There was concern, of course, that this would hurt donations, etc, etc. I don't know. But some of our HUGE benefactors had been graduates of "Western Reserve University" prior to confederation. And now in 2004, as the legacy of that institution seems top have been shluffed off by the powers that be, some are angry.
Anyway, WAAAAAAY to much info, but I thought I'd share.
Judd
