Atlanta — November 12, 1997

The recommendation to change the name of DeKalb College was approved today (Nov. 12) by the Board of Regents, in recognition of the institution’s growth in the Atlanta metropolitan area.

The institution now will be known as Georgia Perimeter College, to reflect its five- campus presence and increasing accessibility to Atlanta’s major traffic corridors.

The new name was one of those proposed by Dr. Jacquelyn Belcher, president of DeKalb College, who had conducted an inclusive, cross-campus effort involving all sectors of the College’s constituencies. Students, faculty and staff all were invited to suggest new names for the institution. That process resulted in the submission of hundreds of names, which were narrowed into a final list by a campus committee. After her review, President Belcher then forwarded her recommendation on to University System of Georgia Chancellor Stephen R. Portch for action by the Board of Regents.

The change is one of the last actions resulting from the board’s Mission Review process, which among other issues, evaluated the University System’s practices regarding identity and nomenclature relative to national patterns and trends.

During that process, external reviewers noted that “DeKalb College is unique among the associate-degree institutions in that it is a multi-campus institution.” The External Review Team cited that the existing name “does not reflect this characteristic nor the regional nature of the institution, which serves not only DeKalb County, but other areas of the metro-Atlanta area as well.”

Most of the System’s two-year colleges were recommended to retain their existing names in the Mission Review process, except for DeKalb College and what was formerly known as Brunswick College. Brunswick is now referred to as Coastal Georgia Community College.

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