Sacramento State recognizes that many individuals use names other than their primary (or legal) names for a variety of personal, cultural, or other reasons. Accordingly, students, faculty, staff, and administrators may use a preferred name (or chosen name) for a variety of university-related purposes when an individual’s primary name is not otherwise required. As a part of Sacramento State’s commitment to inclusive excellence, we have completed a campus-wide project to use the preferred names in all systems and processes where legal names are not required.

The project was submitted by the Vice President of Inclusive Excellence to the Information Resources and Technology division but it took collaboration with the entire campus to implement the use of preferred names. The project lasted a year and a half and consisted of multiple components to include: examining all IT systems that use students/employees’ names, adding preferred names to all major systems, evaluating business processes and advising practices in various departments and divisions such as Student Affairs, advising centers in Academic Affairs, Bursar’s office, etc. A big part of the project was the change management/raising awareness campaign that was done by the VP of Inclusive Excellence (in collaboration with IT) by providing multiple presentations, training workshops, involving social media, creating training videos, and sending mass communications to students and employees. A set of guidelines and a protocol were developed to ensure the ethical use of preferred names.

Sacramento State would like to share its experiences going through this complex process with other campuses who are still going through this change or have not started yet. There were many lessons learned from the project and other CSUs may be able to benefit from Sacramento State’s project overview.