“If the sidewalks weren’t enough, we’re renaming all the buildings, so good luck,” quipped Northern Kentucky University president James Votruba at the Fall Convocation.

Despite the jovial nature of the comment, Northern Kentucky University did some heavy lifting this summer. With the construction of Griffin Hall, NKU moved 550 operations between the Business Education Psychology (BEP) and Applied Science and Technology (ST) buildings, according to Assistant Vice President of Facilities Management Larry Blake.

The College of Business moved to the ST building and the Department of Mathematics moved to BEP. However, as Votruba outlined, departments’ locations are not the only changes these buildings face.

Both BEP and ST will be getting a name change. ST will soon be called the Business Academic Center and BEP will be called the Mathematics, Education and Psychology Center.

Blake said the name change was decided after many of the facilities housed in the buildings were moved to Griffin Hall.

The moves were made over the summer, while both building’s signs and NKU maps are still catching up. Most of the maps are renewed yearly and will now incorporate Griffin and the newly titled buildings. Blake said that the buildings will display their new names in late October or early November.

The decision to hold off on changing the names was a conscious one, according to Blake.

“The decision was made because of returning students knowing where those buildings were,” Blake said. “It just made more sense to leave the names alone and change them while the students were here rather than while they were gone. To be honest, they’re going to be lost for a half a semester anyway.”

Blake added, “The only thing you have to worry about is the next freshmen class. But changing it while they’re here, they see it change, they know what happened, they know what the name was, they know what it is now. It just seemed a lot easier for everybody.”

For some new students, the name change signals additional confusion to the transitioning campus.

“I’m not sure if I understand that reasoning … it seems advantageous to start from the beginning with the new students. I wouldn’t have noticed the difference, but now it’s probably going to be more confusing since I’m used to this being BEP,” said Liz Sakaki, junior integrative studies major and first-year NKU student.

While the new building names make sense for the departments they now house, there are students who will continue to call them by their old names. Senior accounting major Ryan Broughton said, “My sister is a freshman here, so I’ll be saying ST building and she’ll know it as the other name.”