Dear Val



At Middlesex we only have one graduation week per year - this week 13th - 17th July.  We invite all students who have been awarded their degree from 1st September - 31st March and all those students expected to complete their degrees by June.  We have a deadline of 26th July by which students have to register on-line to attend, after this date the system closes and students can no longer register.  Any students after this date we fit them in manually to our seating lists and will carry on doing this until our seating cards are completed (normally a week before the ceremony) however we cannot sell guest tickets and these have to be purchased on the day.



Students can turn up on the day and we will always fit them into a ceremony however they may not be able to get guest tickets into the actual ceremony marquee but guests can watch via the video link in our lecture theatres.



We allow them to defer their ceremony for however long they wish however the onus is on the student to contact us to advise they would like to attend



Regards



Emma MacLaren

Graduation Officer



-----Original Message-----

From: ARC Assessment Practitioners Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Val Pickard

Sent: 06 July 2015 16:43

To: [log in to unmask]

Subject: Award Ceremony Deferrals



Dear All

Apologies if you are up to your eyes in award ceremonies but we are in the process of moving from one ceremony per year (held in January currently so all have been awarded) to two ceremonies July and November with invites provisional on passing. So next year we have a Jan, a July and a Nov ceremony. For those of you who have the two ceremony periods could you let me know what your rules are for allowing graduates to defer to the next ceremony within the year.



Our current process is to allow students in exceptional circumstances to attend the next ceremony which is obviously a year later but do you experience students declining their actual ceremony invite to attend the next one within the same year for reasons that do not constitute exceptional circumstances, eg going on holiday.



Do you also have cut-off dates for accepting the invitation to the ceremony and if they do not meet this deadline do you then allow them to attend or defer to the next?



If an administrative error means that we missed inviting a grad how would you deal with this - do you put the onus on the student to alert you to the fact that they should be graduating at the point the invites go out?



Any other advice gratefully received.

thanks 

Val