Starting in the spring 2026 semester, Muhlenberg began working on refreshing its brand to find new ways to express the College’s values through marketing. Through updating how Muhlenberg presents itself, all media outlets that the College uses, including the website and social media pages, will be reconsidered for new approaches.
Spearheaded by the Vice President of Communications & Marketing, Todd Lineburger, the brand refresh group is working toward reemphasizing the importance of Muhlenberg College through its values and all that it stands for. Lineburger is the head of marketing and communications. He oversees how the marketing team ensures the College’s brand is expressed powerfully and accurately. He said, “Muhlenberg’s brand is embodied in the way we use words and images that tell the world who we are, what we stand for, what value we offer, why we do what we do.” Branding is more than just a logo or catchy slogan– it has to trigger an emotional response to be successful in portraying the morals of the College.
This is a continuous process that is expected to be completed at the end of the fall semester. Lineburger is working with a team spread throughout departments, including students, faculty, staff and members of the Board of Trustees. They started meeting this past spring and plan to reconvene and share their progress with the community in the coming weeks. In addition, Muhlenberg students provide their feedback through surveys and Student Government Association (SGA) meetings.
Lineburger shares, “This work is always ongoing. Like any brand, Muhlenberg’s brand is a living thing– the sum of how people think and feel about the College.” Last spring, the goal was to find a way to rearticulate the values of the College more clearly and concisely. This semester, the marketing team is working towards implementing the efforts by finding appropriate words and images to portray it.
Lineburger continues, “The outcome of our work will explain who we are, what we stand for, how we do what we do, and why we do it. By expressing this in a way that is true to Muhlenberg and as exciting as possible, we will help the college continue attracting talented students for whom this College is a great fit, donors who make so much of the Muhlenberg experience possible and local organizations and people with whom we partner for all sorts of reasons.”
One of the most important pieces of the brand update is student voices. Earlier this year, BergConnect sent out an announcement that urged students to attend the Brand Refresh Strategic Communications and Brand Community Workshops happening on April 8. The efforts of the brand refresh complement those that came out of the workshops, led by Rebekkah Brown, vice president for advancement, and Provost Laura Furge. The two workshops were held in conjunction with SGA meetings to hear the community’s input on how Muhlenberg should promote itself.
Furge and Brown shared through a BergConnect update a couple of days later that nearly 200 faculty, students and staff attended the workshops, not to mention the responses in the survey sent out to community members who could not be present. A variety of feedback was received through around 1,000 individual ideas, reflections and suggestions. According to the data spreadsheet shared after the event, some key findings related to branding include marketing of student/graduate outcomes through billboards, growing partnerships with local businesses and organizations, strengthening the alumni networking community and increasing local marketing. During the sessions, attendees were encouraged to put sticker dots next to the ideas that they resonated with.
This response helps all members of the Muhlenberg community follow a path for the future on how to showcase the College. The marketing team will take into account input from students, faculty and staff, as the community offers ideas on how to best represent Muhlenberg and its values.
