University of Alaska at Fairbanks
Alaska
1917
Formerly “Alaska Agricultural College”
An academic hood list published by the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) in 1948 described the University of Alaska as having a hood lined with a single color of azure blue. Probably because this hood lining was too easily confused with the bright blue hood lining of Mt. Holyoke College, the Bureau modified Alaska’s design in the 1950s. A list compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) described the university’s hood lining as gold with a royal blue chevron, a description that did not change in 1969 or 1972 IBAC lists.
Because “royal blue” had come to describe a medium shade of blue in the 1950s when brighter colors were popular in US culture, the IBAC’s new hood lining assignment for Alaska was confusingly similar to the hood lining the Bureau had assigned to St. Elizabeth College in New Jersey (gold with a Presbyterian blue chevron) in 1905 or 1906. To avoid this problem, the University of Alaska’s blue chevron has been inverted.
It is not known how or when Alaska Agricultural College selected blue and gold as its school colors, but these are the colors of the flag of Alaska, which was designed by a 13-year-old boy named Benny Benson in 1927. Today, the Alaskan flag uses a dark shade of blue (the same shade of blue in the US flag), but the state and the college historically used a shade of blue that varied between an azure blue and a “true” blue; the latter was more commonly used.
Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): azure blue/gold (1934-1935)
