“When the Executive Board decides to organize a range of academic ceremonies on one day and in so doing also covers the presentation of all Bachelor’s degrees, you need to go along with that process as a department”, says Peter Janssens, Program Director at Chemical Engineering and Chemistry. “Regardless whether you are for or against this.”

Janssens therefore assumed that all bachelor’s students about to receive their diplomas on September 21 – including 64 of his own department – would only celebrate this during the general ceremony due to take place in the market hall of MetaForum from 15.00 to 17.00 hours. A large gallery will seat some 700 students, from the 861 whom obtained their degree, and their relatives, which is estimated to raise the total number of persons to some 3,500. Around 17.00 hours the students, dressed in robes provided by the university, will simultaneously throw their caps, also provided by the university, into the air.

Supporting policy

Janssens: “I found out too late that other departments had, by way of supporting policy, decided to hold ceremonies of their own also in the Auditorium or at their own departments. Once we found out about this, it was too late to stage that also for Chemical Engineering and Chemistry”.

Janssens finds it odd that this “two-track policy” is going to take place during MomenTUm, “for when you win the Champions League you are not going to celebrate that twice either. In essence, this impairs the underlying idea for this day.”

For their own presentation ceremonies, degree programs could choose from two time periods: from 12.00 to 14.30 hours or from 17.00 to 19.30 hours. So students will already have received their diplomas prior to the general ceremony, or they will receive them later in the afternoon. Bachelor’s degree graduates of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry can collect it at the department administration.

While Janssens thinks that this setup is going to confuse parents and friends of the graduates, he is also partly disappointed that his own degree program now does not have its own ceremony anymore. “As a relatively small degree program we did always turn this into a special moment, with speeches, flowers and taking photos.”

The Computer Science and Engineering study program is not taking part in the Bachelor’s degree ceremony on September 21 at all, because it was feared that, given the large number of graduates, the diplomas would not be ready in good time. Data Science is not present either, but that is because this young study program does not have any graduated bachelor’s students yet.