Fourth generation crosses the stage
One family has beaten a wellworn path across the Massey University graduation stage.
Matt Hoggard, the fourth generation of his family to graduate at the university, received his bachelor of science degree at a Massey graduation ceremony at the Regent on Broadway yesterday.
It is Massey’s Palmerston North graduation week and more than 1000 people are graduating, including 40 who are receiving doctoral degrees and 119 who are receiving master’s degrees.
Hoggard’s mother Robyn Hoggard, grandmother Judy Owen and late great-grandfather Neville Green are all Massey graduates. Robyn Hoggard and Owen were all on hand to witness Hoggard’s big day.
Palmerston North-based Robyn graduated with a bachelor of business studies in 2007, Owen, who lives in Hamilton, graduated with a bachelor of arts in 1981 and a masters in sociology in 1985 and Green graduated with a bachelor of arts in 1967 and a bachelor of education in 1968.
Hoggard, who now lived in Auckland, said it was special following in the footsteps of his family members. He later put on his great-grandfather’s graduation robes, which the family had kept.
‘‘I was old enough to see my mum graduate, which was pretty memorable, and to see my mum get a photo with my greatgrandfather,’’ Hoggard said. ‘‘Now on the day of my graduation it’s pretty cool.’’
Owen said it was an emotional day.
‘‘The interesting thing for me is my parents both did degrees. My mother graduated from [Victoria University] during the [World War II] which was quite a feat at that stage, there weren’t very many women graduating.
‘‘Dad had started his degree before the war and he didn’t finish it off until after the war.’’
Two of her other children, Peter and Sandra, are also Massey graduates, with a bachelor of agriculture and a bachelor of applied science, respectively.
Her other daughter Maree is the odd one out, having studied to become a doctor at University of Otago.
Hoggard’s grandmother on his father’s side, Margaret Foot, also graduated from Massey, completing a bachelor of arts in the 1990s.
The family had also been longtime users of Massey’s distance studies capabilities.
Green was one of the university’s first extramural graduates in the 1960s and at Robyn’s graduation the family celebrated three generations of extramural graduates.
Owen said when she was studying extramurally it was vastly different to now, with everything on paper.