Greetings! If your institution hoods doc graduates *during* commencement, please let me know the format and flow (timing) of that portion of your ceremony. Our college used to have a separate hooding ceremo0ny, but we’ve been asked to combine it with the commencement ceremony as the number of our doctoral programs grow. Thanks!
April Boulton, Dean of the Graduate School
Hood College boulton@hood.edu
Hi April – at U of Alabama, we do hood the doctoral students at the main Commencement ceremony. The doctoral students process across the stage first, followed by masters and then bachelors students. We used to organize them by college but since covid we have not. When the doc students walk in, their mentor/hooder walks behind them and sits beside them. Once the names start being called, the doc students and their mentors file across the stage, stopping in the middle where the hooder climbs up on the box and hoods the student. During that moment the reader reads not only the student’s name but the dissertation director’s name also (who may or may not be the hooder). After all the doc students and their hooders have crossed the stage, the box is removed and the masters students begin filing across the stage. So the doc students do slow the ceremony down…but students and audience seem to enjoy the hooding! Let me know if further information would be helpful.
We do something similar to what’s described for Alabama (without the box). It does take some time, but we don’t have so many students in any particular commencement that it has become unwieldy.
Will Cantrell
Michigan Tech
We developed a separate hooding program during COVID and have maintained it. The PhD recipients are hooded the day before the general commencement, and then walk across the stage wearing their hoods by College, PhDs first, then Masters….
Rich Collins
University of Alaska Fairbanks
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