Sam Houston State University
Texas
1879
Formerly “Sam Houston Normal Institute” and “Sam Houston State Teachers College”
Students at Sam Houston Normal Institute were using gold and white as their school colors as early as 1894, but at some point in the 1950s gold was changed to orange and blue was added as a third school color. The shade of Sam Houston State Teachers College’s orange was dark rather than bright, and the blue was a medium shade of “true blue”.
It is not known if the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) ever assigned an official hood lining pattern to Sam Houston State Teachers College, as the first description of the college’s hood from the Bureau was in a list from 1972. Earlier descriptions from Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) and Academic Dress and Insignia of the World (1970) said that the hood lining had three colors: blue above “burnt orange” divided by a white chevron. The description in the IBAC list from 1972 – blue above orange (not “burnt orange”) with a white chevron – was probably derived from Sheard’s work.