Last summer marked a large change for Montgomery College. The institution formerly divided by three individual identities was united under a single purple and silver banner. Gone too were each campus’ mascots, replaced the Raptors in a community poll (original story here).

It’s been almost a year since the mascot swap took place, and we’ve yet to see the prehistoric fruits of the poll. This, of course, has left many of us to wonder where exactly our new mascot is.

“We had more than 70 entries in the competition,” Director of Communications Elizabeth Homan said. “We have identified four semi-finalists. We took [the entries] to a series of focus groups, including faculty, staff, and students.”

The four finalists are currently refining their designs based on feedback from those focus groups. The designs will then be sent back to another series of focus groups before a final decision is made.

So when can we expect to see the raptor make its debut? “We plan to narrow the field by the end of March, or beginning of April,” Homan said. “The goal would be to have something before the end of the spring semester.”