Andrews University
Michigan
1874
Formerly “Battle Creek College” and “Emmanuel Missionary College”
The Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) must have assigned Emmanuel Missionary College a hood lined green with a white chevron at some point in the late 1940s or 1950s. The shade of green was probably teal, although this was not specified in an IBAC list from 1972.
When Andrews University began conferring graduate degrees in the early 1960s, a special hood lining for doctoral degrees was adopted: gold with two black chevrons. Undergraduate hood linings were still green with a white chevron. The new doctoral hood lining design was first noted by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) and Academic Dress and Insignia of the World (1970), but was not cited in the Intercollegiate Bureau list from 1972.
Although the use of different hood lining patterns to indicate different degrees from the same institution was a practice that violated the rules of the Intercollegiate Code of Academic Costume, the Bureau must have nevertheless registered this graduate hood lining design, because at least one example of a Doctor of Philosophy hood of this type is known to have been manufactured by Cotrell & Leonard, the academic costume firm affiliated with the IBAC.
The school colors of Battle Creek College are unknown, but Emmanuel Missionary College’s colors were green and white. The shade of green was a teal color. Today, Andrews University describes its colors as “gold” and “blue”, but when and why these colors were adopted is not known at this point. Specifically, the shade of blue the university uses is azure, and the gold is dark, of a shade traditionally known as “old gold”.
Why the school’s doctoral hood was lined gold and black is not known, since the school colors of Andrews University at that time were green and white.
To reflect the current colors of the university, here the hood lining of Andrews has been updated to gold with two blue (not black) chevrons. The shade of gold is an old gold, and the shade of each chevron is azure or bright blue. This hood lining is to be used for all degrees from the university.
A final oddity should be mentioned. In an Intercollegiate Bureau list from 1948, a “Battle Creek College” was cited as having been assigned a hood lined “azure blue” with a white chevron. This was not the Battle Creek College that became Emmanuel Missionary College and later Andrews University. It was a different institution that existed between 1923 and 1938, when it went defunct. It occupied the former campus of the original Battle Creek College.