This year Ashland University has gone through a change of idenity. AU dropped the tagline “where extraordinary happens on ordinary days” and has chosen to put a much larger emphasis on the Ashland University seal.

“Over the last year we have been looking at identity issues as a primary focus for Ashland and we just did not feel that the tag line said a lot about who we were,” AU President Carlos Campo said in an interview back in August.  “In terms of our look and feel for things like email and those kinds of official communications we really like the seal, it’s more collegiate than the old logo and the extraordinary tagline.”

The banners around campus that once portrayed the old tagline, have been replaced with new banners that show the Ashland seal. The seal has over 75 years of history at AU, but the story behind it is not commonly heard.

 According to an article published in an old copy of the Ashland Collegian published March 11, 1960, the seal was created in the late 1930’s after a student council sponsored a contest. Harry E. Russell, the original creator of the seal, submitted multiple designs during the contest. Upon recommendations of the contest’s judges, multiple features and designs from the various submissions were incorporated into one single design: the seal.

The seal is unique to Ashland, consisting of a torch, feather quill pen, pine tree, cross, and scroll. The Collegian article published in 1960 breaks down the meaning behind the different symbols that make up the seal.

The torch on the seal is a symbol of the torch of knowledge. The quill pen is known as one of the main tools scholars use all of the time. The scroll symbolizes the preservation and dissemination of knowledge. 

The most interesting and unique aspect to the seal is the pine tree. The tree has been associated with AU for a very long time, so much so that the university’s yearbook was once called “Pine Whispers.” 

AU, in a sense, is the pine tree; all of the other objects rest upon the tree, metaphorically showing that AU is the foundation for the symbols. 

“The seals symbols speak to the principles that we were founded on, and those same principles remain dear to us today. Knowledge, scholarship, endurance and the college’s recognition of the spiritual needs of all through the cross,” Vice President of Enrollment Management Michael Hollenbaugh said over an email interview. “There is not a better symbol to encompasses the transformative experience we expect that all students have as we prepare them for their life calling, whatever that may be.”

With the revival of the crest as a symbol for the AU, and where AU it plans on heading, it is important to know where this symbol has been and its history as withe the university.