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As the Thomas Jefferson University and TJUH campus grows and changes, so does the need to have a unified identifying image or trademark. Whatever you call it--logo, logotype, corporate i.d., or official seal--the latest interpretation of this identifying symbol (adopted April 30, 2003) is but one in a long history of emblems that parallel the institution's history.
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The original and primary purpose for a seal was to emboss the graduation diplomas issued by the Board of Trustees of Jefferson Medical College. JMC was founded in June of 1824 as a department of the now-defunct Jefferson College in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania. The first seal was the same one used by the small liberal arts/theology college. It depicted three stacked books and a scroll surmounted by a serpent coiled about a club. The perimeter read in Latin, “Jeffersoniensis Collegii Sigilium” or the “seal of Jefferson College” with the founding date of 1802 in Roman numerals. This seal was appended to JMC’s M.D. diplomas from 1826 (our first Commencement) to about 1838, when the medical department legally separated from its western Pennsylvania alma mater and became a sole entity with its own state charter.
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The first custom-designed seal appeared in 1839 and was only officially retired in 1967. During which time “imposters” appeared and disappeared. Although the legend changed from “College” to “University” in some cases, and the date of founding was misprinted as 1825 (first classes commenced) or 1826 (first diplomas granted), the image of Thomas Jefferson in profile in a circle continued. Artist William Campbell was employed by the Trustees to refresh Old Jeff and the now-familiar drawing was approved October 1966.
Back in 1915 the seal, along with the entire medical college, was in jeopardy when Medico-Chirugical College merged with the Medical School of the University of Pennsylvania. Penn “invited” Jefferson and the Woman’s Medical College to “join forces” in a scheme to attract more Carnegie Foundation monies to a unified med school, rather than what was currently split among the city’s seven schools. By 1917 Jeff and WMCP had pulled out of negotiations, since it looked like Penn was not (according to the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin) interested in placing “the institutions on an equal basis.” The only concrete evidence of the proposed merger is an unsettling letterhead printing plate now found in the JMC Dean’s Papers.
Other images of our ubiquitous Jeff appeared in such diverse media as the floridly engraved frontispiece to The Jeffersonian, a home-grown medical journal (1899-1916), or the neon icon announcing Jefferson’s Sports Medicine Center. Even the official regalia of TJU celebrate the historic iterations of the seal in the Presidential Badge designed in 1977 for Dr. Lewis Bluemle’s inauguration. Four gilt versions of the seal suspended from black and blue silk ribbons (JMC school colors!) are worn by the President on festive occasions.
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