Texas Tech Decides to Keep Summer Commencement Ceremony

Texas Tech University’s summer commencement ceremony will take place as scheduled next year, despite a proposal in October to eliminate the August ceremony altogether.

The original press release by Texas Tech in November outlined several updates to their commencement ceremonies, such as an RSVP system for graduates, increased available parking, and a new shuttle service.

It was also explained that the United Supermarket Arena’s Jumbotron could be utilized as soon as December of 2018 to project a graduating student’s information during the ceremony, including degree earned and honors bestowed.

These planned improvements were cited as reasons to phase out the school’s Summer/August commencement ceremony.

“Because we will be able to accommodate increased numbers of graduates at each of our individual Commencement ceremonies, we will move to phase out our inclusion of the annual August Commencement event. As we are one of only two Big 12 schools to hold an August event and because our numbers of graduates participating in the August ceremonies are substantially lower than our other events, we will phase out the August Commencement ceremonies to promote increased capacity and service at our annual December and May Commencement events.”

Texas Tech University has now reversed its position on the August ceremony after feedback from students, deciding to keep the ceremony in place for 2018.

The decision was relayed Tuesday, Dec. 19, in a letter by Provost Michael Galyean, which also reinforced the “Commencement redesign plan” first released in November.

Starting in December of 2018, RSVP software will be implemented once ceremonies have reached absolute capacity and Commencement speakers will be recommended to the President by a committee comprised of faculty, staff, alumni, and students.

So far, next year’s Spring and Summer commencement ceremonies have already been scheduled for May and August.