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MEMORANDUM
DATE: Spring 2008
TO: All Graduate Faculty, Deans, and University Officers
FROM: James Schaefer, Associate Dean
RE: Participation in the Spring 2008 Graduate School Commencement Ceremony
The purpose of this memo is to provide you with basic information about the Graduate School Commencement ceremony and to ask you to confirm whether or not you plan to attend. If you are a faculty member, we also ask that you name any doctoral candidates whom you plan to hood.
More specific information on the details of the ceremony will be included in instructions that we will send to you via email just a few days before the ceremony. The late date in distributing final instructions for the faculty and other platform participants is necessary to assure that we provide you with the most accurate information on your placement in the academic procession and your seating onstage. If you plan to participate in the ceremony, please check both your e-mail and our Commencement website regularly as the date for the ceremony nears. Additional information will be available for both faculty and students.
We will update the website often as Commencement draws closer, so please check the site regularly.
A. Basic information about the ceremony
The Graduate School Commencement ceremony will be held on Friday, May 16, 2008 in McDonough Arena. The ceremony itself will begin promptly at 2:30 p.m.
All participating faculty should report to the West hallway of McDonough Arena at 1:40 p.m. Please be on time. The academic procession will form there and will begin the march into the McDonough Arena precisely at 2:10 p.m. Please leave all belongings in your office, as no secure room will be available for robing. More specific information will be included in the instructions that will be sent to you via email just a few days before the ceremony.
The names of all attending master's and doctoral candidates will be read and each graduate will cross the stage to be congratulated by President DeGioia and Dean Barbari.
B. Do you plan to participate? Would you like to read names or hood master's candidates? Do you plan to hood a doctoral candidate?
All graduate faculty are welcome to participate in the academic procession and to be seated onstage. If you wish to participate in the Graduate School Commencement Ceremony, please complete the Faculty Response Form, below.
All participants are required to wear appropriate academic costume. Special order fine quality academic regalia may be purchased through Jostens by calling (800) 845-7464. Please note that these types of academic regalia orders typically take 8-10 weeks to order. For faculty academic regalia rentals, contact Josten's toll-free at (800) 854-3023. Rentals should be placed at least 8 weeks out in order to guarantee alma mater colors. Standard (black) academic gown rentals can be made up to one week of the event. Standard (black) academic gown purchases (black robes) can also be made at the Georgetown University bookstore between May 12-16.
We need volunteers from among the faculty who march in the academic procession and sit onstage during the Graduate School Commencement Ceremony to assist with three activities during the course of the ceremony. Please review these activities and tell us if you would like to assist via the Faculty Reply Form:
- Reading the names of master's candidates: The names of all attending master's candidates will be read in major-field groupings. Every department or program that expects to graduate one or more master's candidate is welcome to nominate a reader. If you do not nominate a reader, your students' names will be read by a reader from an adjacent major field.
- Hooding MASTER'S candidates: Master's candidates will be hooded onstage after their names have been called and they have been congratulated by President DeGioia and Dean Barbari. Five faculty or staff, dressed in academic costume, will perform this function for all master's candidates. We need one individual from each of the following categories: an M.A. program, an M.S. program, and each of the master's programs in Foreign Service and Public Policy.
- Hooding Doctoral candidates: If you are advisor to one or more doctoral students who either have already graduated this year, or who have applied for May graduation, please take a look at the tentative list of doctoral student participants that you will receive via e-mail. The list notes whether or not each individual student has yet been cleared for graduation and whether or not each student intends to attend the Commencement ceremony.
If a student has not yet been cleared, he or she may not actually graduate and therefore would not be eligible to participate -- but you probably know which, if any, of your students are in that situation. The information we have on whether or not a student plans to participate is also not firm -- in some cases, the student gave us this information months ago, and their plans may have changed. Once again, you may have information that is more recent than ours; if so, please let us know.
If you are a doctoral mentor, please confirm whether or not you will participate as a hooder for your student(s); if you cannot participate, but you or the student has arranged for another faculty member to represent you, please add that information to your reply.
The Faculty Response Form may be completed using one of three mechanisms:
Please return this response form by Friday, April 18, 2008.
Please DO NOT reply via campus mail!
If you do not plan to march in the academic procession and participate onstage during the Graduate School Commencement Ceremony but would like to assist with the assembly of degree candidates before the ceremony or the distribution of diplomas after the ceremony, please see the Staff Volunteer Response Form.
Thank you.
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