Virtual Commencement Ceremony
June 14, 2020
11:00 am PST
Each school and college at Portland State will be broadcasting its own ceremony that will be available to view at 11:00 am on Sunday, June 14, 2020. Share this flyer with your friends and family to invite them to the virtual ceremony. The videos are all pre-recorded and will be available to view any time after 11:00 am.
What to Expect During Virtual Commencement
The information below is relevant to University Commencement. Details about additional graduation celebrations from various departments and groups at PSU are available to view on the Commencement & Additional Graduation Event Calendar.
How to Determine Your School/College
Ceremony assignment is based on the student's major or certificate if the student is not receiving a degree. For students with more than one major, your major 1 listed on your Banweb account will be used to determine the assignment.
Viewing Links
Each school/college will have their own viewing link. All links will be available on our main homepage of this site (pdx.edu/commencement) on Sunday, June 14th at 11am PST.
Ceremony Length
The length of each ceremony will vary based on the total size of the graduating class for your school/college. Each ceremony will have 3 videos: PSU congrats and messaging, your School/College congrats and messaging, and graduate recognition. There is an 'Order of Ceremonies' available under the video section for a detailed outline of speakers and content.
The total time for all speaking videos will vary but will range between 40-60 minutes. Viewers can fast forward or skip certain pieces of the video to reduce the length of the ceremony. The length of the graduate recognition video will vary on the size of the graduating class, the last 30 seconds of the graduate video will have a 'Moving of the Tassel' closing of the ceremony.
Virtual Graduate Line-Up
Graduate Recognition will be broken down by degree level (PhD, Masters, Bachelors) and then will be in alphabetical order by your last name (A-Z). There will also be a collection of student slides in the lower portion of each school/college page if you wish to download your slide or skip the graduate line-up video. This is only applicable to the web broadcasts, the OPB televised broadcast will be a scrolling of names.
Conferral of Degrees
Student inclusion in the Virtual Commencement ceremony is the academic celebration but does not formally confer your degree. PSU mails out all diplomas to students once they have met their degree requirements. Learn more information about your diploma.
Accessibility
All videos are closed-captioned and will be embedded onto external pages that hold a collection of the student's slides available to download. If you encounter any issues with the external sites, the videos are available on Youtube and a link to the transcript is available for each school/college ceremony.
If you are in need of a disability-related accommodation for this virtual event or need help with downloading your slide, please contact us by email at commencement@pdx.edu. Our team will be monitoring our inbox on the morning of June 14th to help answer your accessibility questions.
Information about Future In-Person Event
Will there be a future in-person event for the Class of 2020?
PSU plans to host an in-person event for the class of 2020 in the future. Make sure your external email is up-to-date in Banweb. We will use that email to follow up with you about event details once they are available. This website will also reflect any updates as they are avaialble.
Why did we choose to go virtual?
We understand how hard you’ve worked towards graduation and how important it is for PSU to recognize your accomplishments. We know it is disappointing not to have a traditional in-person commencement. Portland State hosted more than 25,000 people at last year’s six commencement ceremonies at both Viking Pavilion and Moda Center.
Moving to a virtual ceremony was not an easy decision, but one we were forced to make because the threat of the coronavirus is prohibiting large gatherings in Oregon until further notice. Public health officials have informed us that there is little chance that the health risk of the COVID-19 virus will abate by June.
Let’s be clear: We are not canceling commencement. We will host virtual ceremonies honoring graduating seniors and graduate degree recipients from all eight of our schools and colleges. We are not able to postpone commencement mainly because it is not possible to know how long coronavirus restrictions will last, which puts any future bookings of large venues in doubt. In contrast, planning to host virtual ceremonies on the previously scheduled day of June 14 will enable us to recreate the pomp and circumstance of commencement and ensures that we will be able to celebrate all of our 2020 graduates.
Commencement is an important tradition and during these uncertain times, we must do our best to keep our traditions alive and take time at the close of the academic year to celebrate the achievements of our graduates.