To avoid assigning duplicate hood linings to colleges and universities that used the same school colors, the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) used different types of heraldic patterns to divide the two or more colors in an academic hood. In IBAC lists from 1927 and 1948, a number of hood lining patterns 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. Unfortunately, today it is not usually known which of these three patterns the Bureau intended to describe.

Western Theological Seminary in Michigan did not appear in early IBAC lists from 1927 or 1948, so the Bureau might not have assigned the college a hood lining until the late 1940s or 1950s. A list compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) described the seminary’s hood lining as “California gold” above royal blue, divided per bar. The citation in an IBAC list from 1972 was more vague, stating that the hood lining was “gold over blue” without defining the heraldic division of the colors nor the precise shades of those colors.