Northwest to hold one graduation ceremony

HANNAH CLAYWELL

Editor | @Hannah_9504

It was announced to Northwest students graduating in the spring there will only be one commencement ceremony Feb. 9, in contrast to last spring where there were four across two days.

In a normal spring graduation, there are anywhere from four to six ceremonies. The ceremonies normally last about an hour, and Provost Jamie Hooyman said with the one ceremony, it is not expected to last more than two hours.

This is not the first time there would be only one commencement ceremony. During COVID, the ceremony was pushed back to August and was held outside. Hooyman said it was very successful during that time and that is why the team thought to bring it back.

“We have done it before, and it was very successful,” Hooyman said. “We got good feedback from the students (and) good feedback from the parents.”

The reasoning behind this decision results from the Spring 2023 graduating class being very large.

Hooyman said they do not want to limit the amount of family that is able to come, so having one ceremony outside is the best way to go about it.

“So this year we have, which is a great problem to have, a lot of students being successful and graduating,” Hooyman said. “Since we have such a large class, we were trying to look at do you do multiple ceremonies? Or do we try it again and see how it works with the one ceremony?”

There are not many concerns from faculty surrounding the decision to have one ceremony.

Department of Language, Literature and Writing Chair Robin Gallaher said she trusts the decisions the leadership team makes about these kinds of things.

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