Dominican University
Illinois
1901
Formerly “St. Clara College” (WI) and “Rosary College” (IL)
The Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) assigned a hood to St. Clara College at some point between 1901 and 1922. Academic hood lists published by the IBAC in 1927, 1948, and 1972 described the college as having a hood lined light blue with a “maize” chevron, which is how the IBAC described a golden yellow shade.
After St. Clara College moved to Illinois and was renamed Rosary College, a 1948 IBAC list cited Rosary’s hood as “rose” with a white chevron. This might have been erroneous, as a list compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) and a 1972 IBAC list both described Rosary’s hood lining as being a single color of light blue.
Unfortunately this duplicated the hood the IBAC had already assigned to the University of Maine, and because Whitman College had been assigned a dark blue and maize lining prior to 1918, here the original 1927 IBAC hood lining assignment for St. Clara has been retained as the hood lining for Dominican University today.
Detailed historical information about the blue and yellow school colors of Dominican University is not available at this time, but the original blue and yellow colors of St. Clara College were light blue and golden yellow shades. After St. Clara moved from Wisconsin to Illinois in 1922 and became Rosary College, the blue gradually darkened. Rosary became Dominican University in 1997, by which point the school’s colors were dark blue and golden yellow.
