U.B. holds first graduation
The University of Belize holds its first commencement exercises at 10:00 Sunday morning at the City Centre. Six hundred and forty-seven students from forty different programmes will be receiving either certificates, diplomas, associate degrees or bachelor degrees. Guest speaker for the occasion is Chief Justice Abdulai Conteh. According to U.B. public relations officer Silvana Woods, a series of graduation ceremonies are planned.
Silvana Woods, P.R. Officer, U.B.
“You should expect a very impressive ceremony. Because it’s a university, we’re going to have the faculty, as it was done under the former University College of Belize, which is one of the five amalgamated institutions. The faculty will wear full academic regalia, those who are there, which dates back to medieval Europe, 12th century. I would like to do a big plug though and say that the graduation committee, although we have agreed to wear the full traditional academia garb this year, we’re looking into getting an academic gown designed that’s more suited to our climate, to our hemisphere, to our region, yet which will still reflect the regality of academia and the different levels of degrees.
We thought why not have four separate ceremonies, which in fact we are doing. One ceremony has been held already, it was for forty graduates of the Regional Language Centre, which is housed at the central campus in Belmopan. They graduated from three different programmes or levels of language training and English as a special purposes also for diplomats had some graduates. That occurred on June eighth. On June seventeenth, the bulk of the graduates will be graduating. I believe it’s about four hundred and ninety-seven from the Belize City sites, which houses five faculties at the moment and about ninety-seven from the Belmopan campus and Faculty of Agriculture. Those graduates from the Natural Resources Management Programme of the Faculty of Agriculture, will graduate with the Belize City set because that programme is currently being run from the Belize City site.”
The amalgamation of five tertiary level institutions, namely Belize Technical College, Belize Teacher’s College, Belize College of Agriculture, Bliss School of Nursing and the University College of Belize brought about the University of Belize on August first 2000.
