The chevron was by far the most common heraldic division the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) employed to divide the two or three colors in an institution’s hood, but beginning in 1895 the “parti per chevron” was also used quite frequently. Here the two school colors were placed in the hood lining one above the other, with the division between them following the shape of a chevron. Later the IBAC began to use a per reversed chevron division and a division per bar on rare occasions. Confusingly, in IBAC lists from 1927 and 1948, a number of hoods 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, and today it is not usually known which of these three patterns the IBAC intended to describe.

The Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume assigned Nazareth College a hood lining of this type between 1920 and 1927. IBAC lists from 1927, 1948, and 1972 described the college’s hood lining as “white above gold” without defining the heraldic division between the two colors. A list compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) is more helpful in this regard, describing the division as “per chevron”.

After Nazareth became Catherine Spalding College in 1969, their hood lining inexplicably changed. In Academic Dress and Insignia of the World (1970), Sheard said that the hood lining was gold with a white chevron, as does a 1972 list from the Intercollegiate Bureau. This must have been erroneous, as it would have duplicated the hood lining the Bureau had already assigned to Mills College in California. Here Nazareth College’s original IBAC hood lining has been restored for continued use by Spalding University.