After isolation, a final walk across the stage
ASU grads pick up diplomas in person
It’s more than just a walk across a stage, and yet it seems to be all about the walk across the stage.
When students and faculty talked about missing out on graduation, they circled around feelings of sadness and loss.
So when Arizona State University offered its colleges an opportunity to host in-person ceremonies — adhering to COVID-19 safety guidelines — faculty jumped at it.
Colleges created plans for hybrid ceremonies, and for some, this was the first time faculty put the ceremony together themselves.
As strange as it is to have a graduation ceremony without the typical coliseum’s worth of families and fanatics cheering students across the stage, graduates and faculty still felt emotional and grateful for a chance at sealing their accomplishments in person and giving families watching the livestream from home a reason to cheer.
Graduates of ASU’s Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation participated in seven ceremonies topping 50 students each across two days this week.
In the first of two Monday ceremonies, about 35 doctoral program graduates sat in chairs spaced 6 feet apart in a
small room with a stage.
The ceremony followed strict Centers for Disease Control and Prevention safety guidelines, down to the lectern being sanitized between each speech.
“A year ago, who could have known that graduating in person could even have been a possibility,” said graduating student Hayley Avino.
“My husband is in the parking lot waiting for me,” Avino said. When she stepped out of the ceremony, he waved at her.
And with her family all over the country, “having the ability for it to be livestreamed on YouTube in such an accessible manner really allowed everybody to be present with me in some way.”
Graduating student Reynaldo Kieser also didn’t believe an in-person graduation would happen, but going through the gantlet of the program with peers who became so close without crossing the finish line together in person would have been disappointing.
Kieser said it was bittersweet for graduates’ support systems to be absent.
For graduating student Lauren Harrell, finishing graduate school online was isolating as she spent hours on camera each day but none in person.
She said the ceremony was the first time her class of six close-knit students was able to be in person in a full year.
“Honestly, I’m really glad we got to walk at all,” Harrell said. At home, her family watched the livestream and sent Harrell screenshots of her walk midceremony.
But she liked the personal, efficient small ceremonies that bypassed the usual three-hour drag.
Judy Karshmer, the dean of Edson College, delivered a speech before graduates walked across the stage to be hooded, receive their diploma covers and take a photo with Karshmer. Each student’s doctoral project was announced.
At the back of the room, they took their official graduate photos on a small erected background, the only time they could take off their mask.
As the graduates walked out of the ceremony, faculty with clappers and pompoms cheered.
They also received Edson College face masks commemorating the graduation.
Enough students opted to walk that the seventh ceremony had to be added to an original six.
“To be able to honor our graduates in person after quite a year is pretty special for us,” said Karshmer.
“I don’t think we have realized how important nurses are during the pandemic,” Karshmer said. “It’s hard doing school remotely. It’s hard.”
Many students had to stop seeing patients when the pandemic hit, but were still required to get the same number of hours of direct patient care in spite of working entirely from home.
“Some of these people were working full time as nurses in ICUs taking care of COVID patients while finishing their degree,” Karshmer said. “I think that makes them superheroes.”
Last spring’s graduation ceremony was entirely virtual after the pandemic sent students home from campus during spring break, Karshmer said.
This time, with so many vaccinated — including every nursing student graduating at the event — and more knowledge on how to keep people safe through masks and social distancing, the college went forward with the idea of small inperson ceremonies to honor the graduates.
“Two years ago, we were able to march down the street with bagpipes” to go to the Phoenix Convention Center for graduation, Karshmer said. “So it’s not that, but it’s more than we had last year.”
Ceremony is ‘exclamation point’ for a student’s academic career
At the Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions ceremony,
440 graduates arrived to walk across the stage at the lobby of the University Center building in downtown Phoenix.
Since the college has more students, leadership decided to section off groups of students of 50 or fewer in different classrooms.
Each group waited until it was their turn to walk the 6-foot-spaced trail of dots into the University Center and up to the ceremonial stage.
As Dean Jonathan Koppell put it, the ceremony helps put an “exclamation point” on the graduates’ academic career for them and for their families.
“We average over 10 family members per graduate,” he said. “The reason that is the case is because the graduation is a big deal, not just for the graduate, but for the entire family. It is a collective moment of achievement and triumph.”
One graduate, Janica Murphy, receiving a master’s degree in public policy, explained that her family had flown in from out of state to watch over a livestream at her home.
“My family flew in from California and Utah, and I was really hesitant on wanting to come here, just because it would feel weird walking without them to celebrate,” she explained. “But it was such a family effort that this was the best I can give them. That’s why I made the decision to come down here.”
She said that though the celebration felt “a little rushed” and the graduates weren’t able to “celebrate in the moment as a cohort,” she understood.
“Obviously I’m really appreciative that they made an effort to give us a regular celebration. At the end of the day I do wish that my family was there, but I’m grateful that they did it the way they did it.”
Another graduate, Latithea Delisa Gay, receiving a master’s in social work, laughed as she said she felt a little “bummed” that there was a hiccup in announcing her name when she walked across the stage.
“He didn’t say the school, she didn’t say my name, and I just went across the stage,” she said. “And then when I got off the stage, all the way, they said the college and then they said my name.”
For Rebecca Smith, receiving a master’s in criminology and criminal justice, this moment was worth the wait.
“I was supposed to graduate in December,” she said, “and I took an extra semester of random classes so that I could have the opportunity to do it in person, hoping it would be a thing.”
She was glad she stuck it out.
“I got to walk, and my best friend since fifth grade, she’s walking right now,” she said. “Getting to graduate with my best friend since fifth grade is awesome.”
Doctoral hooding was first chance to meet academic mentors
For ASU’s College of Health Solutions, this was the first time faculty arranged their own doctoral hooding ceremony.
The proceedings were small. Only 17 graduates were in attendance with 11 mentors and a few other staff members to perform the ceremonies in a ballroom on the Tempe campus on Tuesday.
Sitting outside the ballroom, Associate Dean Julie Liss said the doctoral hooding was not just for the graduates and families but for the advisers as well.
“Having been an adviser for doctoral students,” she said, “they do become part of your legacy, part of your family. Almost like one of your offspring in some ways, and being able to launch them in this ceremony is as meaningful to a mentor as it is to the student.”
The wide room was split with mentors in chairs 6 feet apart on the left and students on the right in their own socially distanced seats.
Each graduate walked to the base of the stage at the center of the room as their mentor on the stage placed the hood over them.
As graduates faced away from their mentor and toward the camera streaming to their loved ones, they removed their masks for a brief photo and then walked away.
Mary Warner, receiving a doctorate in behavioral health, bought her graduation regalia when she graduated in September 2020.
At the time, she had graduated as an online student living in Connecticut and so she had never met her adviser in person.
She held on to those robes, hoping to get the chance to meet all of those people who had helped her get to this point.
“I told my husband that when they open up I want to go because I never met my adviser in person and so I wanted to meet all the faculty and thank them personally,” she said.
She began to tear up as she explained that this moment represented the accomplishment of a 20-year goal.
“I’m a nontraditional student in that I’m in my 50s honestly, and I had a goal of getting a doctorate degree for a long time,” she said. “I’m going to start crying, ’cause I was so happy when I finally finished it.”
Reach breaking news reporter Miguel Torres at Miguel.Torres@arizonarepublic.com or on Twitter @MTorresTweet.
Reach breaking news reporter Nienke Onneweer at nienke.onneweer@arizonarepublic.com or on Twitter @thenienke.