In tandem with brand development at the University of Iowa, student governments on campus passed a joint resolution to rebrand both organizations Tuesday night.

The UI Student Government will change its name to the Undergraduate Student Government, or USG, effective fall 2020. Graduate and Professional Student Government will retain its current brand, GPSG President Dexter Golinghorst said in an interview with *The Daily Iowan* Monday.

Overall, Golinghorst said, the organization will remain under the umbrella of UI student government as a whole, but the undergraduate branch of student government will alter its name to ensure an improved external understanding of the two organizations and how they work together.

“The university is doing its rebrand and we wanted to position ourselves to align with that,” he said. “So UISG will become USG, the undergraduate student government, and GPSG will keep the same name. UISG and GPSG already use the same letterhead with student government on it, so the brand that doesn’t differentiate is already here. It was [the] logical step to continue that in a formalized way in terms of external branding.”

UISG President Noel Mills said in an interview with the *DI* Tuesday that the majority of the work to change the name and logo will occur this summer. This will also bind the two organizations and better represent their working relationship with the yellow ‘Iowa’ logo and a student-government logo underneath it, she said.

“The entire university is moving towards one type of logo,” Mills said. “We want to align with the university and it’s a really attractive logo. We wouldn’t want to keep the current logo with the name change, either. It will be better to have a unified logo and brand.”

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UI Office of Strategic Communication Senior Director for Marketing Communication Ben Hill spoke to UISG at its meeting Tuesday. Hill showed the organization the process that the university went through to change the brand.

He showcased the updated website, which the audience responded to positively. This process will help unify every aspect of the university, Hill said, but some of the old logos will continue to be utilized secondarily.

“We’re defining the university’s brand to help us succeed,” he said. “From our brand audit, we saw that our brand is very fragmented. Our brand is also digital. We are overhauling our website to better serve prospective students. Consistency builds familiarity and trust. Variations dilute the brand. We’re trying to strengthen the brand. In the future, we will be using the yellow ‘Iowa’ as our logo.”

Mills said that the merge between the UISG and GPSG logos is incredibly important, and so is the name change for the undergraduate branch. Mills said she hopes this will clear up any misconceptions about the pair organizations on campus.

“It is incredibly misleading to call ourselves the University of Iowa Student Government and also have the Graduate and Professional Student Government,” she said. “People often are confused about who I represent, and it causes confusion. It makes more sense to make this change.”

Golinghorst said the two organizations will continue to operate separately, but that it was important to ensure accuracy on every level of the constituents GPSG and UISG serve, in addition to the partners they work with.

“The names of UISG and GPSG have led to some confusion occasionally with outside partners who don’t know the difference and don’t know how we operate on campus,” Golinghorst said. “But in terms of our branding and communications, we operate jointly now, so to reflect that we will be using University of Iowa student government as a whole to accurately reflect our missions.”