Graduation will look a little different for UNBC students this year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Geoff Payne, the Interim President, confirms that they will be hosting a virtual convocation ceremony instead of a traditional one.
“And what that is is working with a company, and to have students have their name called and to have their degree announced. They will be put together kind of like we do with the live stream, and we’ll try to incorporate as much of our traditional convocation things virtually, and it will all be brought together in sort of one big package.”
Payne says it was the toughest decision he’s had to make yet…
“We recognize that this is not ideal, we recognize the disappointment in the students, but we wanted to make sure that we celebrated and recognized the outstanding achievement that they’ve done in order to graduate from UNBC.”
Payne says they did talk about just delaying it…
“We did think about that. A number of institutions in BC and Canada have multiple convocation dates. Here at UNBC we only have the one in May. We thought about postponing until the fall and see. We looked at the logistics and everything like that and I know it’s a hard thing, people said just make things work, and we really did spend a lot of time going through that, but in the end we decided to go with the virtual convocation.
Payne does say they are working with the graduates on having an alumni event in the fall to celebrate their achievements.
The virtual convocation will take place on June 26th.
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