Shared ceremonies
Why do we have shared ceremonies?
Growth
The need for more shared ceremonies during graduation is due to the positive increase of student intake within the University and individual Faculties. Along with this, the combined efforts between the Graduation Team and Schools in communicating with these possible graduands has led to an increasing attendance rate.
History
Many Faculties have been participating in shared ceremonies for a number of years. The Graduation Team always attempts to keep these Faculties together as they have built successful working relationships for graduation and created a well run shared ceremony on the day.
Space
Shared ceremonies are necessary to allow for sufficient space to be reserved for expected graduands. Space is now a luxury we do not have in regards to graduation, therefore we need to make best use of it wherever possible.
Utilising all the space in the venues allows for an even spread of ceremonies, all of which are roughly the same capacity and duration.
Student experience
Shared ceremonies are required to allow the Graduation Team to ensure enough space is allocated for any unexpected rises in graduation attendance nearer the event.
Preparation for a Shared Ceremony
Scheduling
The schedule of ceremonies is created based on expected graduand attendance statistics. These statistics are worked out by comparing the amount of potentially eligible graduands against the previous year’s attendance rate on the day of graduation.
Assigning platform seats
Platform seats are fairly assigned to Faculties once the schedule of ceremonies has been created and expected student figures are known. Then the Graduation Team allocates Faculty space on the platform to reflect the Faculties expected graduand figure, i.e. if a Faculty has 30% of the graduand seats in the ceremony they will be allocated 30% of the platform Seats.
NB The total 24 seats on any ceremony platform is not affected by any Faculties teaching awards – these spaces have been allocated outside the standard 24 seats and will therefore not affect the assigning of space per Faculty on a shared ceremony platform.
Assigning Faculty staffing
Unless the Graduation Team find a more appropriate way of assigning Faculty staff support roles to shared ceremonies, these roles will be fairly assigned reflecting the Faculties expected graduand figure within the ceremony, like the platform arrangements above.
Reader’s Scripts
The Graduation Team will ensure the order of Faculties is listed on the front page of the reader’s script. However, the order of Faculties for ceremonies is always automatically sorted into alphabetically ordered, i.e.
1st: Biological Sciences
2nd: Health Sciences
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