In fall of 2008 the Parents Association provided funding for the International Student Services and Programs office to offer the International Commencement Celebration as a live stream on the internet.  Dr. Lucia Hammar, Director of ISSP, wrote a letter to the Parents Association following the commencement ceremony.

On Saturday, May 23 at 1 PM, a group of parents and friends of graduating international students gathered in the campus Concert Hall.  These proud people were the lucky folks who managed to fly from their home to the USA to see their son or daughter or grandchild or niece or nephew receive a bachelor’s or master’s degree from California State University, Fresno.  International students who were graduating marched in, robes swishing and tassels tossing.  The university president, provost and vice president of Student Affairs each spoke.  Two graduating students spoke: a young man from Japan with a newly earned masters in linguistics, and a young woman from Malaysia with a bachelors (with honors) in psychology.  Parents of those two young people were present but most of our students were not able to see their parents’ faces.  But now, thanks to our Parents Association, everyone had the chance to “tune in” from all over the world and watch live.  Now the streamed program, which was recorded, is available on the University’s website along with the official university commencement ceremony.

Our technical colleagues on campus worked with our office beginning last October to make this possible.  We had help from captioners working off site (on the east coast!) who were keying in the words of the speeches and the names of each student as they walked individually across our Concert Hall stage. It was amazing that it worked as well as it did with multiple cameras, multiple mikes and people in three locations connected only by wires and ether.

Thank you so much from the parents of the world to the parents of the Parents Association!  We really hope we can do this again next year, when we believe even more people will be tuned in to this possibility and will join us on the internet.

Sincerely,

Lucia, ISSP staff and international students and families

Dr. Lucia Hammar is the  director of International Student Services and Programs at Fresno State