Community Colleges of Spokane rebrands to show cohesion between two schools: ‘We needed a refresh’

The Community Colleges of Spokane is now Spokane Colleges, a rebranding announced at the Greater Spokane Incorporated State of Education event this week. Spokane Colleges includes Spokane Community College and Spokane Falls Community College.

The rebranding is part of the organization’s strategic plan approved by trustees two years ago, said Chancellor Kevin Brockbank.

“It was really obvious we needed a refresh and a modernization of our logo and our mascot,” he said.

An executive group of trustees, the two college presidents and Brockbank consulted with internal and external stakeholders during the process, including 1,300 people who joined focus groups or took surveys.

“That’s been a really beneficial part of this process, is following the research and the input,” he said.

The new logo resembles two abstract triangle shapes stacked on top of one another, one positioned normally and the other upside down underneath it. The top, which is green, is a Ponderosa Pine that represents Spokane Community College. The bottom, which is blue, is a waterfall that represents Spokane Falls Community College. The triangle shapes can be broken apart and used individually for each college, but when placed together, they create a navigation arrow that symbolizes the student journey.

The logo highlights both individual colleges that make up Spokane Colleges, Brockbank said.

“The logo itself is something we’re really happy with,” he said.

The mascot of Spokane Colleges has been Bigfoot, represented by a large footprint.

“The foot did not test well in survey groups and focus groups,” Brockbank said.

Instead of a large footprint, the mascot is now represented by the fierce, snarling face of a Sasquatch. Although Spokane Colleges is the only higher education facility with bigfoot as a mascot, the schools previously used any bigfoot drawing or representation they could find instead of using something uniform, Brockbank said. The new Sasquatch, known as Skitch, will be the only one in use. “We needed a Sasquatch that was uniquely us,” he said.

There was brief discussion of changing the names of SCC and SFCC, but that was quickly squashed after the surveys clearly communicated that changing the names would be removing the identity of the schools, Brockbank said.

“The thing that really stopped it was the results of the surveys,” he said.

SCC opened in 1963 at its current location at Mission Avenue and Green Street, which had previously been the Spokane Technical and Vocational School. SFCC began enrolling students on a second campus on Fort George Wright Drive in 1970.

Both colleges offer a wide variety of vocational programs and transfer degrees that students can use to continue their education at a 4-year university. Spokane Colleges serves about 20,000 students a year.

Spokane Colleges has been pushing quickly to complete the rebranding, including new signs, an updated website and billboards. This marks the start of an 18-month awareness campaign to remind residents of the role of SFCC and SCC in the community, Brockbank said.

“We are really working hard to get exposure,” he said. “We want everybody to recognize what we do, what we offer the community. We want to be a very visible part of higher education.”