© Ross Woods, Oct. 2004, Rev. 2011, '23
If you do it right, graduation ceremonies are special events that bring people together in a way not normally possible.
They should move along fairly quickly, and need not be boring. A good speaker will have something important and interesting to say without taking too long. You can also personalise a fairly small graduation for your graduands.
Graduation ceremonies follow a fairly rigid pattern regardless of the institution or level of qualification. They have a very clear beginning, middle, and end.
Graduation ceremonies are normally separate occasions. However, if you hold a graduation in a church service, make sure you have enough time to achieve its purpose and don’t mix it up with other parts of the service.
Graduates need to feel that this is their special day, that their qualifications are valuable, and that they are valued by the college.
Graduations are usually a major turning point in students’ lives, looking back on their college experience and forward to what they will do next. Graduations are often celebrations with family and friends, and might be farewells to classmates whom they might never see again.
Graduations create college identity by bringing people together for a special occasion. They are one of the few times the whole college body can gather in one place. They are also one of the few times when students’ friends and family attend a major college function.
An identity as a community is essential to a small or new college; older colleges already have a strong sense of tradition.
In some universities, the graduation ceremony is actually an open meeting of the university senate where the degrees are actually conferred. In other universities, the degrees are conferred at a closed meeting, and the graduation is the awarding of testamurs.
They are solemn because they are important and need to be special days for the students, their families, and the college.
Dress and act for an important occasion and carry it off with a sense of ceremony. Give honour to students’ achievements and make it an important day for them and their families. Consequently, dress should be quite formal. This means ties and jackets for men, and the equivalent formal standard for women.
Even if you think that informality in the ceremony is okay, your guests probably won’t think so, and neither will you later on. Informality might appear cool at the time, but in hindsight it will demean the value of students’ qualifications. Students who dress down should not be graduated. If you’re leading, improvisation and ad libbing won’t cover your lack of planning.
The tradition of special academic dress goes back to the Middle Ages. Each college determines the academic dress for its graduates, and particular forms of academic dress represent particular qualifications, just like the diploma does.
All staff and graduands should be wearing correct academic dress according to their qualifications. If they aren’t, they should not participate and should sit with ordinary guests.
The graduation ceremony is the time when a graduate gains the right to wear academic dress. Consequently, many graduations in some way symbolise the gaining of the right to wear academic dress. The best way is for a graduator simply to move the cap tassel from over the left eye to over the right eye. Academic dress is now complete and correct. (Some graduators place the hood or sash on the graduand during the ceremony, but this is rather messy in formal clothes, with people stretching arms up, straightening the thing, etc.)
Assembling the procession should be done outside, and out of sight of the guests.
The MC asks everyone to stand.
The staff and graduands proceed in with senior college office-holders at the front. Staff members go to their places on stage. Students have places on stage in a small graduation, but have reserved front rows in a large graduation. They remain standing at their places.
The MC invites everybody to sit when all procession members have reached their seats.
There might be the usual welcomes, explanation of what’s going on, introduction of special guests, special items, etc. In some universities, the commencement of the meeting is a formal declaration of the opening of a meeting of the university Senate.
In very small graduations, you may have time to personally introduce each graduand and speak about them in some way. Or you might let students speak for themselves. (Topics usually include their college experience or their aspirations after college.)
The MC reads the name of each graduand, who comes forward, gets his/her diploma, has a hand shaken, perhaps has a tassel shifted and a photo taken, and then goes to a specific place to stand or sit. The names of students graduating in abstentia are also read out with the title of their qualifications.
Start with the lowest qualification first and move on to the higher qualifications, finishing with the highest qualification. For all students of the same qualification, graduate them according to the alphabetical order of their surname.
To move it along, the MC calls the next person while the last person is still having their hand shaken.
Except in very small graduations, applause tends to slow the graduation down and make it rather boring. You would be advised to discourage it until after the last student has graduated. In very large graduations, you might graduate people class by class, and allow applause after each class.
Keep this part very brief. (Long speeches are usually boring and can kill the graduation.) There might be:
The speaker gives the graduation speech to the graduates, while the audience "listens in".
The special guests and staff form a procession out of the hall or off the stage and the graduation ceremony is finished. Students do not join this procession.
If you get it right, the "feel-good" factor will last as long as the graduation photos hang in your graduates’ living rooms. In fact, everybody will enjoy the graduation and probably won’t even notice that you’ve done a good job.
But people will notice and remember mistakes, which you can prevent by good planning. Graduands easily make embarrassing mistakes because:
Start planning well ahead. A simple graduation is fairly easy to plan, but you still need to do it. Graduations are usually the job of the Academic Dean or his/her representative.
Make a list and check that each one has met all requirements for graduation. If they have not done so, they should not be graduated and should not be part of the ceremony.
This sounds obvious, but some colleges want to give students something to help them graduate with their friends and to prevent them from losing face. But being a little bit graduated is like being a little bit pregnant.
Book it if necessary. Check out the facilities so you can plan who will sit where, walk to where, stand where, etc.
Morning, afternoon, or evening? What works for you, your staff, and your students?
You can do something simple, but either do a good job or don’t do anything at all. In major graduations, many students arrange their own parties or family celebrations for afterwards. If you have people coming from out of town, you may need to provide food.
The front cover of a program sheet normally has the college logo and name, the graduation date, and the place. Inside, there should at least be a program of what’s in the ceremony and a list of all graduands with their respective qualifications. You can add lots of things to this, including details and photos of special guests, details of students, student photos, and thesis titles.
Tell them as early as possible the date and place, what will be required of them, and how much it will cost.
You will need to order in advance caps and gowns from hire places. Get the details of sizes and costs, and make sure you know how it will be paid for. What about holding deposits? Hoods and sashes will probably need to be made.
Keeping your graduation as simple as possible will make life easier on everyone. Graduands need to know how they will get onto the stage, where to go to get graduated, where to stand after graduating, when to sit down, and when and where to get off stage. Staff also need to know exactly what to do and where.
If you have too many graduands to fit on stage, they will sit in the front rows of the audience seating. It is even more difficult if they also have to walk to the centre of a very wide stage, or if the floor boards creak or echo. Timing and movement will take careful management:
Have clear, simple step-by-step instructions and diagrams that work specifically for your venue. Photocopy them and give them out at the beginning of the rehearsal.
If you’doing a graduation on your own premises for people whose qualifications aren’t high enough to wear academic dress, your only outlay might be your time and the cost of programs. From there on up, you can easily spend as much as you're allowed. You should pass some costs on to the graduates, particularly academic dress and photos. Find out what works for your college.
Believe it or not, you will need to rehearse the graduation in the venue to make people sure that they know what to do, where to stand, where to go, etc.
It should be enough for people to show up early on the day, and make sure they get there on time. Plan extra time for graduands to get their caps and gowns on as they will not be used to wearing them.
Make sure that the diplomas are printed, signed and ready beforehand. Either put them in folders or roll them and tie them with ribbon. Either way, you need names on the outside. They should be laid out on a table, or perhaps on a tray held by someone. Holding them in hands doesn’t work.
A different person should have the specific task of finding the next diploma to be handed over and giving to the graduator. (The chances are quite high that diplomas will get out of order or be hard to find.) The alternative, which will disappoint the students, is to give out dummy rolls of paper on stage and give out the real diplomas separately later on.
It doesn’t work for the graduator to try to do all the following all at once:
Imagine if everybody in the auditorium is waiting for the graduator on the stage to shuffle through handfuls of diplomas looking for the right one to present. (The worst case scenario is not far off; what if the graduator drops some of them?)
After the graduation, review it at a staff meeting. What went well? What will you do differently next time? What will create your college's own atmosphere and traditions? Keep your planning records so that next year's graduation will be very easy to plan.
Cap: Academic mortarboard
Diploma: the qualification printed on a piece of paper (even if it’s a Certificate or degree, not just a Diploma). The technical term is testamur, but not many people use that word.
Gown: Academic gown
Graduand: A person who is going to graduate at the ceremony
Graduate: A person who has already graduated
In abstentia: Graduating at that time but not present at the ceremony
Mortarboard: the kind of flat hat
that is part of academic dress. Most have four points, but Indonesia has five. Some doctoral degrees don't have mortarboards, but have a kind of floppy hat called a bonnnet, an some have a tam which is a smaller kind of cap.
Tassel: The tassel of an academic mortarboard
Testamur: See diploma
above.
I made up the word graduator for the person handing over the diplomas, because I needed a word for it. But graduator isn’t really a standard English word.