Quick Summary
- This was what we had planned for spring 2020, until the pandemic hit
- Ceremonies will be held from 8-10 a.m. Friday-Sunday, June 10-12
- Registration opens March 21 for students wishing to participate
Updated 5 p.m. March 8: The online registration site will open at 9 a.m. Monday, March 21, an hour later than originally announced.
Derailed by the pandemic in spring 2020, ϲϿ Davis’ big new way of holding undergraduate commencement — consolidating seven indoor ceremonies into three and moving them outdoors — is moving forward in 2022.
The Commencement 2.0 ceremonies are scheduled from 8 to 10 a.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday, June 10, 11 and 12, in ϲϿ Davis Health Stadium.
Online registration for eligible undergraduates wishing to participate will open at 9 a.m. Monday, March 21. The link is not yet available, but when it is, students will find it on the ϲϿ Davis Commencement website.
Students will be divided by majors into the three ceremonies, and will learn upon registering when their majors are graduating, i.e., Friday, Saturday or Sunday. Any student with multiple majors will be asked to select one of them for commencement.
The online registration site also will ask students how many tickets they want for guests (up to four), and allow students to put their names in for extra tickets if they become available.
Other spring commencement dates and locations are listed on the ϲϿ Davis Commencement webpage.
ϲϿ Davis’ commencements went virtual in spring and fall 2020, then were modified in spring and fall 2021 into limited-scale, in-person ceremonies during which graduates were announced individually as they walked across a stage.
Each event was limited to 400 students, each of whom could bring two guests. Grads and their guests stayed in their own “pods” 6 feet apart from others — and there was no handshaking on the stage.
The December 2021 schedule included not only the annual fall commencement but makeup ceremonies for the Class of 2020, which had previously celebrated commencement virtually.
‘ϲϿ Davis’ commencement
The campus administration unveiled its new plan for undergraduate commencement in May 2019, almost a year before the pandemic, with the change to take effect in the spring of 2020.
Previously, undergraduate commencement took place in The Pavilion (now known as the University Credit Union Center), with students divided by college. Owing to the size of the arena, that meant three ceremonies for Letters and Science, two for Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, and one each for Biological Sciences and Engineering.
Chancellor Gary S. May wanted to change the emphasis to “ϲϿ Davis” commencement, instead of college commencement, to put more emphasis on our institution as a whole, as one of the leading public universities in the nation.
“Our students are graduating from ‘ϲϿ Davis,’ and we want the world to see them as ϲϿ Davis grads,” the chancellor said at the time. He announced the change after consulting with deans and other faculty members, and students, on the new format.
At ϲϿ Davis Health Stadium, the university can accommodate for each ceremony about 2,500 students plus guests for a total of about 10,000. The graduates will be seated on the field, and the audience will wrap around them, in the stands and in seats behind the graduates on the field.
Media Resources
Dateline Staff: Dave Jones, editor, 530-752-6556, dateline@ucdavis.edu; Cody Kitaura, News and Media Relations specialist, 530-752-1932, kitaura@ucdavis.edu.