After many years of identity and branding confusion, Southeastern has finally obtained the coveted southeastern.edu from Educause, a non-profit organization who manages .edu domain names for institutionally accredited postsecondary schools.  

“Having a web address that does not align with the university’s identity policy has always been troublesome in terms of branding,” said Erin Cowser, executive director for Public and Governmental Affairs.  

A message from President John L. Crain found on the graphics standards page of the Southeastern website states, “For proper branding, we do not want to be known as SLU and especially not as SELU.  We realize confusion has arisen because of our website domain name, www.selu.edu. Unfortunately, at the time we acquired our domain name other universities had already claimed the preferred www.slu.edu and www.southeastern.edu.  We continue to pursue a domain name change that will alleviate any future confusion.”

To limit confusion students will still be able to access the university’s website via the old domain name of www.selu.edu.

“With volumes of documents and data attached to the selu.edu web address, it would be irresponsible for the university to simply delete it,” said Cowser. “At present both are in use so they mirror each other.”

Email addresses may also be affected by the new domain change.  Addresses will be able to use the new domain as their return address. However, it will require manual set up.  Because, some faculty and staff have used their email address for many years, everyone will have the option to keep their old addresses.

According to Cowser, universities are technically only allowed one domain name. However, since Southeastern had already secured two names, selu.edu and ulh.edu, prior to the rule being instated Southeastern’s two domains were grandfathered in.  Since the southeastern.edu adoption, ulh.edu has been dropped and selu.edu will be maintained for historical purposes.

This web address formerly belonged to a different Southeastern University, a private, non-profit university located in Washington D.C. that had been in existence since 1879 and lost its accreditation entirely in August of 2009. The domain subsequently became available in spring of 2011.

“At present the university has begun to promote southeastern.edu as the web address for prospective students and community members,” said Cowser. “It would be futile to expect current students to change what they have come to know as selu.edu throughout their college careers. However, the hope for future students is that they will readily identify and become familiar with the southeastern.edu address instead.”