Download Class of 2020 commencement program:
[ Ссылка ]
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Dating back to the universities of thirteenth-century Europe, the conferring of degrees signified that faculty members had attained the guild status of a master. Originally, this “master’s” degree was the only one offered; the baccalaureate was simply a stage towards mastership. During the ceremony, black robes were worn in imitation of the clergy, for at the time church and university were one. When the hood was placed over the candidate’s head, the ceremony was consummated, and mastership was achieved.
Over the centuries, graduation evolved to commemorate more than the end of an educational endeavor or the mastership of a craft. It became the start of a new adventure, a passage to professional status recognized by the community of scholars and the community at large.
Today, we call this ceremony commencement, a term defined as both an act of commencing and the ceremony for conferring degrees. In essence, it means a beginning within an end. A middle English term, commencement traces its roots to Anglo-French, Old French, and finally, the Latin word, cominitiare, a combination of the prefix com and initiare, meaning “together, begin,” a fitting origin for a word that evokes a graduate’s first steps taken in fellowship and a poignant reminder that in each destination lies a new dawn.
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this is not an official list of graduates
