My recommended approach to this would be to use Custom Labels.

What you can do is to use the {{$Label.}} merge syntax throughout your page, and then use skuid.label.add to add new Labels to your page when the page first loads — for your purposes, this is essentially adding a global variable accessible via Merge Syntax.

1a. On the page(s) where you want it to say “Teacher”, add a new JavaScript Resource of type Inline - NOT Snippet/Component, with this body:

(function(skuid){ 

   skuid.label.add({

 'personLabel': 'Teacher'

 });

})(skuid);

1b. On the page(s) where you want it to say “Contact”, add a new JavaScript Resource of type Inline - NOT Snippet/Component, with this body:

(function(skuid){ 

   skuid.label.add({

       'personLabel': 'Contact'

   });

})(skuid);

2. Throughout your page, use {{$Label.personLabel}} to merge in either Contact / Teacher:

3. Save, and Preview your page. Your merges should come through.

That works great Zack!  I have one place, a single field that shows for teachers but not students. Is there any way to read the merge variable and use it to control visiblity ?

There’s not a good supported way, no. A very hackish way would be to add some metadata properties to one of your Models and then access that via Merge Syntax, like this:

(function(skuid){&nbsp;<br>&nbsp; &nbsp;skuid.$(function(){ &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; skuid.model.getModel('Contact').personLabel = 'Teacher'; &nbsp; &nbsp;});<u></u><br>})(skuid);

Then in your Merge templates you could do

{{$Model.Contact.personLabel}}

I’m gradually beginning to get a feel for skuid. This is what I came up with, but I thouoght I’d check if there was a more built in way first… thanks Zach