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CONVOCATIONS AND COMMENCEMENTS

For most of its 40 years of independent existence UAHuntsville was a commuter campus. Students drove to campus, took classes and left, as if it were a community college or effectively a ‘post-secondary high school’ with grades 13-17. Just over 15 years ago we started building residence halls and encouraging our students to live and learn on campus rather than just in our classrooms and laboratories.

The campus community is working together to create a much more vibrant student life and transform UAHuntsville into a more traditional, residential campus while recognizing that a significant fraction of our student body is older than at other universities (the average age of our undergraduates is 23). Many students have families and/or hold down significant part-time or full-time jobs, which of course makes it difficult, if not impossible, to live on campus.

Nevertheless, for as many students as we can, we wish to give them the complete campus experience, from start to finish; hence the title of this blog.

Convocation and commencement are the two bookends of a university-degree program. Both are formal academic ceremonies and both are occasions for celebration. Convocation defines the start of your degree and commencement defines the end - and of course the commencement of the next phase of your life.

Both ceremonies are traditional parts of the campus-life experience at almost all universities throughout the nation. When I came to UAH a year ago, I was surprised to discover that convocation was simply a gathering of the faculty to welcome new professors and reflect on the previous year’s accomplishments. Students were not part of the occasion.

I also found that our commencements were held off campus in the Von Braun Arena. Many parents, relatives and friends coming to see the ceremony never set foot on the campus where all our graduating students had their education. I think it is time to take the step to involve all students, staff and faculty in the whole process of a UAHuntsville education - from convocation to commencement.

This year’s outdoor convocation was the first step in this process. For the first time in UAHuntsville’s history, all the freshman class were together in their Charger blue shirts, watching the members of the faculty and administration parade in their academic regalia, learning what a university degree is all about, hearing about the transitions in the university’s leadership, then taking part in a team-building, Drum Café, experience, followed by a barbecue, another concert and a grand fireworks exhibition on UAHuntsville’s campus (to the consternation of our neighbors on University Drive!)

While the convocation was great fun, we can and we will make it much better. Sure it was hot (but it probably always will be, and most of you weren’t in academic robes!). We hope that everyone found it a worthwhile experience and we will be working with the SGA and other student groups to keep this occasion a memorable and enjoyable start to every student’s UAH degree and one of our university’s enduring traditions (as the painting of the UAH monument has already become).

The end of everyone’s degree program is Commencement. This year we will move our fall and spring Commencements onto campus for all the reasons I just described. There has been some concerns among students about the restrictions on tickets for the two parts of the Commencement program. Let me try and clarify what we are doing.

On the Friday evening, December 12th, we will have the traditional start to the commencement festivities with the bestowal of honorary degrees, a distinguished graduation speaker and recognition of our PhDs, who have reached the pinnacle of academic achievement. This will be a short ceremony in Spragins Hall and, because of the size of the hall, everyone will not be able to have all their family and friends come and watch. But this part of the festivities is not primarily for family and friends. It is for the graduating students, so we can do three things: First, we will hold up to the graduates an example of what it takes to achieve an honorary degree – a recognition of what an individual can do in their life with education, persistence and skills and a lesson to inspire all our graduates of what it takes to live the good life (see Plato). Second, it is a last chance for our graduates to attend a talk by a distinguished national leader and learn what they have to tell you about life. Lastly, all our graduating students can applaud those fellow students who have successfully survived the many grueling years that it takes to complete a PhD. The PhDs are the only ones who will walk across the stage and receive their degrees on Friday evening.

So this is really the last class on campus for all the graduating students and we hope they will take the opportunity to attend.

On Saturday December 13th, we will formally hand degree certificates to all bachelors and masters students. Each graduate will get to walk across the stage in Spragins Hall, each will be announced by name and by degree(s) completed, receive their certificate and be photographed officially for posterity (and unofficially by their family and friends who attend).

We expect that each graduate will initially be able to have about 10 tickets for that event which, given all our past experience, is more than the average number that students have requested for commencements at Von Braun (Student Affairs will redistribute tickets not utilized by graduates.) Most importantly, graduates will be on campus with their families and relatives, attending the last event of their studies on the campus that has nurtured them over the preceding years.

In time, we would hope to be able to have a larger facility than Spragins to host this event. We may even consider open-air graduations in summer but, for the time being, we will make Spragins Hall a memorable site for all graduates and their families as they attend the culminating event of their many years at UAHuntsville.