No standard function. Plus your "new date" isnt really a date yet.... you need to use some conversion function to make it a date (CDate, Dateserial, Datevalue)
Or if you are storing it in a column that is a date field... You are then implicitely converting string to date, doing anything implicit (allowing access to think for you) is not advicable...
Read a bit further mike....
If you are loading it into a table, you are getting implicit conversions... Not advicable...
Analyzing the data you get and normalizing it, like you did is indeed good practice! Job well done I would say !