To avoid assigning duplicate hood linings to colleges and universities that used the same school colors, the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) used different types of heraldic patterns to divide the two or more colors in an academic hood. In IBAC lists from 1927 and 1948, a number of hood lining patterns were described as “[color] above [color]” or “[color] over [color]”, which referred either to a hood lining divided per chevron, per reversed chevron, or per bar. Unfortunately, today it is not usually known which of these three patterns the Bureau intended to describe.

The IBAC initially assigned Upper Iowa University a hood lined white with a peacock blue chevron, according to lists from 1927 and 1948. Possibly because this was too easily mistaken for the hood lining the Bureau assigned Drake University (white with an azure blue chevron), in the late 1940s or 1950s the IBAC rearranged the colors in Upper Iowa’s lining by placing the peacock blue above the white and dividing the two colors horizontally. A list compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) described the university’s hood lining as peacock blue above white, divided per bar; an IBAC list from 1972 simply said the hood lining was “peacock blue over white” without defining the heraldic division between them.

Here Upper Iowa’s lining colors have been transposed to allow more of the university’s unusual peacock blue color to show when the hood is folded and worn.