Bagpipe music will fill the air and graduates will don their brand-new blue regalia, as the University of Mary Washington prepares for its 112th Commencement, scheduled for May 6, 2023. About 1,000 graduates and their families will celebrate their academic accomplishments and student success in person on Ball Circle during the Saturday ceremony.
A livestream will be available to watch from home, as well as in several indoor viewing locations on campus, including Dodd Auditorium, Lee Hall Room 414 and the Colonnade Room in the Cedric Rucker University Center.
This year’s class includes more than 100 first-generation students who will be recognized with a white stole. Graduates in the Honors Program – celebrating its 10th anniversary this year – will don a light blue stole.
UMW students also customize their regalia by decorating their mortarboards and wearing colorful cords to signify their induction into various honor societies. These include the national senior honor society Mortarboard; the oldest national honor society, Phi Beta Kappa; the international honor society in education, Kappa Delta Pi; and an international honor society for business, Beta Gamma Sigma. Students top off their graduation-day style with academic hoods in colors that correspond to particular degrees worn over the traditional commencement gown. And while the gowns are now blue, they are also “green” – made from recycled water bottles by Virginia-based company Oak Hall.
Friends and family from the commonwealth, across the United States and around the world will be able to watch this year’s graduates make the iconic Mary Washington procession from the Bell Tower at the tip of Double Drive to the ceremony site at the center of campus. And viewers can share congratulations with all the graduates who cross the stage on Ball Circle using #UMWGrads on social media, with well wishes broadcast on site prior to the ceremony start at 9 a.m. EST.
Tune in on the livestream starting at 8:30 a.m. on Saturday, May 6.