Celebrating Success: Online Graduation during Coronavirus

On August 17, PVCC will be hosting a virtual graduation ceremony followed by a campus drive-through in order to safely honor the graduations during the Coronavirus. The virtual ceremony will begin streaming on the PVCC website at 2 p.m. and is expected to run until around 3:30 p.m. The footage will then be made available on PVCC’s YouTube page. The drive-through will take place from 4:30-6 p.m. on the same day. PVCC faculty and staff will line College Drive to cheer on the graduates, along with music and decorations to add to the celebration. Participants will be given gift bags filled with PVCC swag.

“Everything we’re doing now is different than we’ve done it before,” said Andrew Renshaw, the dean of student services at PVCC, who is planning the event.   

The virtual ceremony will be pre recorded but will have the feeling of a live production.   The ceremony will include speakers, a commencement address given by Mark Warner, and a speech from Frank Friedman, the president of PVCC.

“Some parts of it will be the same as a traditional graduation ceremony,” said Renshaw. “There are things that we need to do with a virtual ceremony, but we need to move through it in a way that is sensitive to the fact that people will be watching it online.”

Instead of having students walk across the stage, each student will have a personalized slide with their name, degree, and Latin honor, which will become a slideshow of all the graduates. Students may also choose to send in a picture of themselves to add to their slide. A professional speaker will read off each slide to honor the graduates. Each student will send in a recording of themselves saying their name prior to the ceremony, “so when the professional speaker says the person’s name, they know it will be pronounced correctly,” said Renshaw.

Tune into the virtual ceremony and stop by the campus to help honor our graduates and celebrate their monumental achievement!