Loma Linda University
California
1905
Formerly “College of Medical Evangelists”
Students at the College of Medical Evangelists adopted purple and gold as their school colors in 1909, because these were a variation of the purple and silver colors being used at the American Medical Missionary College in Battle Creek, Michigan. Both were Seventh-day Adventist institutions for the training of medical missionaries.
A description of the hood lining used by the College of Medical Evangelists did not appear in Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) lists from 1927 or 1948, but was first cited (as Loma Linda University) by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) and later in Academic Dress and Insignia of the World (1970) as having a hood lined gold with a purple chevron. IBAC lists from 1969 and 1972 described the university’s hood lining the same way.
There had been several schools in the 1927 and 1948 IBAC lists that were recorded as having this hood lining pattern, but all of them were either defunct or had changed their colors by the 1960s, which may be why the Bureau recycled this pattern for Loma Linda University.