University offices prepare for Commencement

By: Kimberly Osborne
Posted In: News

Salve Regina University’s Commencement events may only take one weekend to complete, but that one weekend is a year in the making for the many campus offices that must plan these events year after year.

Dr. Theresa Madonna, vice president for academic affairs and dean of faculty at Salve Regina, estimates that several hundred hours have gone into planning this year’s ceremonies, which will take place on May 15 and 16. As part of the planning process, the university has rented a sound system, chairs, and a tent that is set up overlooking the Cliff Walk. “We rent a tent that is about the size of a Ringling Brother’s, Barnum and Bailey’s tent,” Dr. Madonna said.

One of commencement’s near-disaster stories happened a few years ago, Dr. Madonna said, when the tent, which is set up a week and a half before the event and is guarded by security 24 hours a day, was lifted from the lawn and carried to the top of the O’Hare Academic building, during a storm one night. The tent company came and fixed the problem and the ceremony went on as planned.

Even bobby pins are covered. Dr. Madonna said she wants students to focus on the symbolic meaning of graduation and not be worrying about anything that could go wrong on their special day. To that end, the university plans buys 2 pounds of bobby pins to help keep the graduation caps in place during the ceremony.

According to Dr. Madonna, a number of young women forget to bring bobby pins and get stressed when the caps keep falling off their heads. Madonna does not want something so frivolous to interfere with the celebration.

Looking ahead, the search for next year’s graduation speaker has even begun. The process of choosing a speaker begins with a list of candidates produced by the Senior Administrators who get input from the university and the community. The speaker is chosen based on his or her humanitarian efforts and whether he or she has displayed characteristics that coincide with those present in the university mission statement. (This year’s speaker is Dr. Timothy Flanagan of Miriam Hospital in Providence.)

Rebecca Wakefield, assistant to the vice president of academic affairs, said she has spent more than half her time working on commencement preparations since she arrived at Salve in January. During that time, she has been busy answering the questions of students and parents alike as well as overseeing the distribution of the commencement packets, which include announcements and tickets to the ceremony.

Undergraduate students receive six tickets while graduate students receive four. Although the deadline for informing the commencement office of the number of a guests attending commencement was Feb. 27, Wakefield said that she is still chasing students for this information.

Even with all this attention, Wakefield fears that there is something she’ll forget, due especially with this year’s commencement being her first.

“We in the office have all been having dreams about it at night,” said Wakefield.

Graduation Day isn’t the only worry. Laurie Donley, assistant to the dean of undergraduate studies, said that her office’s main role in the planning process is organizing the Honors and Awards ceremony, which takes place on the Saturday before Commencent.

That ceremony recognizes students that have reached academic excellence in each department. Students also receive awards from campus organizations. Donley said that 45 students will be receiving awards this year and approximately 115 will be receiving their honors cords.

According to Donley, the most time-consuming part of the ceremony planning is writing up the 75-page script, which includes information from 30 different departments. Each citation needs to be personalized.

Donley said that she believes that the campus registrar’s office has the most tedious of jobs, though as they must check every name to make sure the spelling is right and on every diploma and diploma case.

The Public Affairs Office also has a role to play. Matt Boxler, public information officer, said that the public affairs office must find information on every graduating student to be sent for publication in his or her home newspaper. Boxler also tries to find graduating students with engaging stories to send to news media in the New England region. The office also profiles all the honorary degree recipients. And on the actual day of graduation, public affairs is in charge of accommodating the media at the event.

This year Boxler will not be catering to the media unless that means being interviewed or having his photo taken because this year he will be among the graduating students, receiving his master of arts in humanities.

“I’ll get to see if our office is doing our job the way it should be done, from a student’s point of view,” said Boxler.