A pleasant little reference to old-school letter-writing.

At Seton Hill College, which gained university status in 2002, the switch cost about $200,000. The team there also relied on community goodwill: They asked business owners along Route 30, a major traffic corridor in Westmoreland County, to re-letter their moveable-type signs to congratulate the new Seton Hill University.

Most did, President JoAnne Boyle said.

The school’s students and faculty already had adapted.

“It wasn’t a hard sell at all,” Boyle said. “We spent a year raising the question with every constituency we could think of. We asked them, ‘Who are we?’ Because we were still thinking of ourselves as little Seton Hill College, even though it didn’t feel that way here.”

Still, 10 years into it, the transition has not entirely finished. Boyle still writes to alumni, who are more likely to cherish the identity of the smaller college they attended. She is, with them, still making progress, one thank-you at a time, through a deep pile of outdated stationary.

via Mercyhurst name change will take some time | GoErie.com/Erie Times-News.