COS holds contest to redesign banner

The College of Sciences launched a competition Sept. 14 to redesign its gonfalon, the stylized banner that is hung during commencement ceremonies. Any person can submit a design, and the College of Sciences is reaching out to the entire UCF community for ideas.

The winning design will be hung at each of the commencement ceremonies and the designer or designers will receive recognition when their design is revealed the week of Feb. 4 at UCF’s 50th anniversary celebration week at the College of Sciences.

The requirements for design proposals are minimal. All designs must incorporate the UCF star in the top left corner of the gonfalon and the basic color scheme of black, gold and white must be incorporated.

Teresa Dorman, the assistant dean for the College of Sciences, created the competition for a new gonfalon because she said the current banner is “ridiculously ugly.”

“If you look at the current gonfalon, it’s like five randomly selected symbols that honestly don’t really do a good job of representing the diversity of our college,” Dorman said.

She first noticed the gonfalon at a commencement ceremony when it was pointed out to her.

“About four years ago, I was at a graduation and one of my colleagues leans over to me and said ‘Our gonfalon looks like crap. Whoever’s the next dean needs to do something about that,’” Dorman said. “So when we did get a new dean, Dr. Michael Johnson, I remembered that, and it was an idea that I just needed to float to him.”

Dorman said UCF’s 50th anniversary celebration was a perfect opportunity to change it.

The design submissions will first be judged by a committee composed of students, faculty, staff and alumni. Once the committee selects the top designs, they will be sent to the College of Sciences’ dean, the UCF Registrar’s Office, Vice President of Student Development and Enrollment Services Maribeth Ehasz and President John C. Hitt who will select the winner.

Dorman said Student Government Association senators are likely to be among the students who serve on the committee.

“Because COS is such a large college, there are a lot of majors that get forgotten about,” said Arianna Young, a senator from the College of Sciences. “Since this new flag is supposed to be a representation of the spirit of the entire college, I just think it’s important for whoever is on the committee and people who are submitting the designs to make sure they try hard to represent all aspects of the College of Sciences.”

Ida Cook, chair of the Faculty Senate, expressed interest in the gonfalon design as well.

“There seems not to be a unifying theme,” she said of the current banner. “It would be nice to see what people are going to do to tie them all together.”

Young said a design that will unify the entire college would be hard to find.

“If someone came up to me with an idea that was just one solid design that did include all of them [majors], that would be ideal, but that’s such a difficult thing to accomplish,” Young said.

The deadline for all design submissions is Dec. 31. Submission forms are available on the College of Sciences’ website.