Table of Contents
Take a comprehensive look at our brand identity on our style guide website.
WHO WE ARE
New Paltz provides one of the nation's most open, diverse, and artistic environments in order to prepare students to excel in rapidly changing times that demand creativity and worldliness. Our tradition of intellectual discovery is enhanced by a location of stunning natural beauty, in a dynamic college town, with easy access to New York City. Our unusually wide array of professional and liberal arts majors fosters a rich academic milieu in which students, selected through a competitive admissions process, can develop to their highest potential.
ABOUT OUR IDENTITY
On a daily basis the State University of New York at New Paltz competes for attention with other academic institutions in a world filled with marketing messages from a wide variety and large number of businesses and organizations, both for-profit and non—profit. Reaching our students, supporters, and contributors can be quite a challenge. How do we establish our place in the market?
One way is to project a consistent and clear identity—our brand. Simply put, a brand identity is the sum total of all perceived information about us as communicated through our various messages—it is a marketing and communication tool. Every communication, including our name and related marks, contributes to building our brand identity.
Our style guide has been developed to help us achieve a consistent identity across all communication vehicles as we reflect the essence of the institution, the strength of our offerings, and the quality of our programs. The consistent application of these standards will help ensure that our communications contribute to a unified image that benefits New Paltz through improved awareness, recognition, and professional appearance.
OUR PROMISES TO YOU
New Paltz has crafted a collection of commitments that its administration, faculty, and staff strive toward in serving our enrolled students. These include:
- We deliver an extraordinary number of majors in Business, Liberal Arts, Sciences, and Engineering and are particularly well known for our programs in Fine and Performing Arts and Education.
- We provide rigorous academics in a highly selective admission environment where students receive and create close personal links with real scholars and artists who love to teach.
- New Paltz embraces its culture as a community where talented and independent-minded people foster openness, diversity, artistry, and creativity.
- Our geographic location is stunning in its natural beauty, located in the heart of a dynamic college town, 90 minutes from metropolitan New York City.
- In keeping with the tradition of the nation's great public universities, New Paltz is linked to the health and vitality of the region, state, and nation through the education of its citizens.
CHARACTERISTICS OF OUR IDENTITY
The following characteristics of our identity permeate our messages when we communicate about the New Paltz college experience. We developed the characteristics based on findings from an internal assessment survey we conducted with current New Paltz students, faculty, staff, and administrators in July 2008. We then tested the characteristics among prospective students, current students (graduate and undergraduate), employees, and alumni to determine which characteristics should be primary or secondary messages for New Paltz.
A DEGREE…AND AN EDUCATION
New Paltz students earn a degree which opens doors to lifelong career opportunities. With that degree comes an education – a true preparation that goes beyond the piece of paper. It is a New Paltz education, one that retains lifelong relevance through what is required to achieve it: broad and specific knowledge, exposure to differing perspectives, open-minded inquiry, and a spirit of inventiveness. This is why two national publications have named New Paltz one of the nation’s top leaders in providing college graduates with the best “return on degree investment” over a lifetime.
CREATIVE ENVIRONMENT OF DISCOVERY
Creativity permeates campus life at New Paltz. The learning atmosphere has an air of imaginative inquiry that bridges all academic endeavors. The faculty encourages students to question, experiment, and discover in ways that lead to innovative thinking. Beyond the classroom, students discover the endless possibilities that exist within a diverse community and the opportunities for scholarship and leadership that will serve them well for their future professional and personal lives.
ENGAGEMENT THROUGH IMPASSIONED TEACHING
New Paltz faculty are dedicated to the art and craft of teaching, and to developing the kind of mentor relationships that help students succeed. While scholarly activity has an important place at New Paltz, teaching is at its center. The faculty's ultimate goal is to empower each student to engage with the world in meaningful ways.
A LOCATION FOR LIFE
SUNY New Paltz is located at the nexus of the best of yesterday, today and tomorrow – a dynamic community in a stunning natural setting, surrounded by the history and culture of the American story and poised to serve as the educational and research leader for the technologies of the future –notably solar energy and 3D printing, with the spirit of entrepreneurship at the heart of it all. The Hudson Valley corridor, from New York City to Albany, affords New Paltz students with a vibrant and dynamic laboratory to use for research, investigation, appreciation, and enjoyment.
COME AS YOU ARE
New Paltz warmly welcomes students of diverse backgrounds, cultures, perspectives and ambitions.
It is the ideal environment for students to explore and flourish, in a community that encourages and
supports each student to seek a higher level of scholarship. Students bring their own intellectual experiences and expand on them in close collaboration with a learned faculty and through mentored and sponsored independent study and research activities, enhancing their education beyond the classroom. This comprehensive educational experience allows each New Paltz student to “come as you are” and leave prepared to excel in a rapidly changing world.
