Over 1600 to graduate from UG this week

More than 1600 students are expected to graduate at the University of Guyana’s Turkeyen Campus’s 52nd Convocation, to be held on November 10 at the National Cultural Centre.
For the first time in the history of the University, the certificates, diplomas and degrees will be awarded at three ceremonies held on the same day. The increase in the number of ceremonies, from two last year, according to the University, is due to the large number of graduating students and the desire to avoid having very long ceremonies, while still maintaining the personal touch whereby each graduand crosses the stage and shakes the hand of the Chancellor.
The first ceremony will be held at 09:00h, and will feature the faculties of agriculture and forestry, earth and environmental sciences, and education and humanities, with the graduation address delivered by Professor David Phoenix, Vice Chancellor of London South Bank University, one of the leading British universities with which UG is developing relations.
The second ceremony, for the faculties of engineering and technology, health sciences and natural sciences, will be held at 13:00h. The feature address will be delivered by Guyana-born Professor Norman Munroe, Director, Office of Student Access and Success and of the Center for Diversity in Engineering and Computing at Florida International University.
The largest of the three ceremonies will be held at 17:00h, and it will involve the Faculty of Social Sciences and the School of Entrepreneurship and Business Innovation (SEBI), the two largest units of the University. The keynote speaker will be Attorney-at-Law Kamal Ramkarran, a University of Guyana alumnus of the Class of 1997, who is a partner at Cameron and Shepherd.
The more than 1600 students will graduate with master’s, bachelor’s and associate degrees; diplomas and certificates. The ceremonies will honour graduates from 116 academic programmes in UG’s eight academic units.
This year marks the first time that students will graduate through SEBI since the launch of the School in 2017. The prospective graduates would have been third-year students in the Faculty of Social Sciences, pursuing programmes that were transferred to SEBI. Notably, also, will be the graduation of the first batch of students from 12 different programmes offered at the University.
At the Berbice campus convocation, where more than 200 students will graduate on November 17 at the University Square at Tain, the keynote address will be delivered by University of Guyana alumna from the Class of 2016, paediatrician Dr Bibi Areefa Alladin-Karan, a Berbician who is a lecturer in the School of Medicine and a practitioner at the Georgetown Public Hospital.