Students who complete their degree requirements during the Spring 2023 semester and who have filed their intent to graduate form are invited to participate in the Spring Commencement ceremony.

Due to capacity limitations, it is LAS policy that only students who have fulfilled the entirety of their degree requirements and completed a certified intent to graduate form may participate in an LAS commencement ceremony. A student with outstanding degree requirements is ineligible to participate until all requirements have been satisfied. For all Spring commencement ceremonies this means that only students who completed their degree requirements during that spring semester can participate. Students completing their degree requirements during the summer or fall semesters are eligible to participate in the December commencement ceremony.

All eligible students wishing to participate in the Spring 2023 commencement ceremony are required to register. UIC has partnered with Marching Orders which will create a display to show your name, degree, and major on screen as you cross the stage.  Marching Order will also have professional name readers record your name to be played while you are on stage. Students will  receive an email with the unique registration link. Registration opens on March 13, the deadline to register is April 9, 2023.

Due to the size of our graduating class and to ensure that we do not issue tickets that go unused, we are guaranteeing only four guest tickets to each graduate. All tickets will be electronically available to students. Graduates may request additional tickets closer to the date of the ceremony, more information about the availability of extra tickets is forthcoming.

Diplomas represent degrees earned, not majors and minors. Majors are only listed on diplomas for students with specialized curricula. See a list of how diplomas and majors are represented (see – “Degree Conferred”).  Transcripts, however, list all appropriate majors, minors, and concentrations. Educational goals are not listed on diplomas or on transcripts.

Diplomas will be ordered and sent 4-6 weeks after degrees are certified. UIC’s diploma printing group, Michael Sutter, has provided a link that shows what a student’s diploma will say and when it was mailed.  Students can begin checking the website in 2-4 weeks after degrees are certified to see when a diploma was sent.

Address Change Information

Personal information (e.g., address change) and diploma information can be found on the UIC Registrar website.

Caps and gowns are now available through the Josten’s website.  Orders will be shipped directly to your home.  The deadline to order is March 17. Caps and gowns will be available for purchase in the Follet, the UIC Campus Bookstore, beginning March 20 for those who did not purchase from Josten’s.  Graduates are encouraged to order through Josten’s.  In store stock may be limited. Cap and gowns cannot be purchased the day of graduation. Only those with correct academic attire are permitted to participate. Tassels are to be worn to the front-right of the cap prior to the ceremony. When degrees are conferred, graduates will be instructed to switch them to the left-side. If you are receiving a Bachelor of Science, your tassel will be gold. If you are receiving a Bachelor of Arts, your tassel will be white.

In addition to our in-person events, all events have a virtual ceremony which will include the live webcast and the customizable graduate slides. The virtual sites will be posted on our homepage closer to the ceremony dates.  Commencement | University of Illinois Chicago (uic.edu)

All graduates are encouraged to customize a commencement slide through the Marching Order registration system.  Graduates can customize a slide with a photo and personal message that can be downloaded and shared with family and friends or posted to social media.  In addition to the virtual ceremonies, the customized slides will be shown prior to the in person events for most ceremonies.

If you have any questions, please email commencement@uic.edu.

LAS Commencement is televised live through the University’s Commencement website, and archived audiovisual recordings can also be viewed after the ceremony through the website. Copies of the recording can be ordered here. In addition, still photographs of Commencement activities are taken for University archival and promotional purposes.

Professional photographs will be taken of each graduate as you cross the stage and as you leave the stage with your diploma cover in hand and will be available for order. Within 2 to 3 days following the ceremony, the photographs will be posted online and can be accessed via the following web page by entering the last name of the graduate and the Commencement year: http://www.gradimages.com/universityofillinoischicago. You will also receive proofs and order forms from the photography company to both the mailing and email addresses you provided on the Attendance Reservation Form within 2 to 7 days following the ceremony.

Faculty attending the commencement ceremony should arrive no later than 8:30 am.

Enter through Gate 2, located far right of the main doors.

Obtain your academic attire, if needed, from the faculty robing area on the lower concourse of the Credit Union 1 Arena.

By 8:40 am form a double line behind the Platform Party of campus and college officials. Staff will guide you.

Faculty who are hooding their PhD candidates at the commencement ceremony should arrive no later than 8:15 am.

Enter through Gate 2, located far right of the main doors.

You will be seated with your doctoral candidate(s) for the duration of the ceremony in a designated area (left side facing the stage). Seats within that area are not preassigned, but it is important that you are seated next to your doctoral candidate so that you can approach the stage together. Please take your seat by 8:30 am.

You will hood your candidate(s) on stage. At the appropriate time during the ceremony, candidates and their advisors will line up at the foot of the stage and approach the lectern together. Marshals and staff will guide you. As you and your candidate advance, the graduate will scan their Grad Pass (QR code), the name and degree title of the candidate will be announced, and you should both approach stage center. At stage center, you and a Graduate College dean will hood the candidate. The candidate will shake the Dean’s hand and exit the stage. You will exit the stage with your candidate or, if you have more than one candidate, you will step to the side and await your next candidate(s) to hood.

Dr. Ransby is author of two award-winning books: Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision (2003); and Eslanda: The Large and Unconventional Life of Mrs. Paul Robeson (2013). She is also author of a third book published in August 2018 entitled: Making All Black Lives Matter: Re-imagining Freedom in the 21st Century. The Ella Baker book was the recipient of 8 national book awards and recognitions including the Liberty – Legacy award from the Organization of American Historians; the Joan Kelly prize from the American Historical Association; and the James A. Rawley Prize (also from the AHA). In 2018 the Chronicle of Higher Education acknowledged the Baker biography as “one of the most influential books of the last twenty years.” Her second biography, Eslanda, was the recipient of the Letitia Woods Brown Memorial prize for the best book in African American women’s history from the Association of Black Women Historians. In 2017 Dr. Ransby was honored as “one of the top 25 women in higher education,” by the publication, Diverse Issues in Higher Education. She is also a recipient of the 2018 Angela Y. Davis Prize from the American Studies Association for scholarship in service of the public good. In 2020 Dr. Ransby received two honors. She was elected as a fellow to the Society of American Historians and received one of the inaugural Freedom Scholar’s Award from the Marguerite Casey Foundation and Group Health Foundation for “social and economic justice scholarship.”

She is also editor in chief of Souls: a critical journal of Black politics, culture and society, and is a member of the editorial working group of the London-based journal, Race and Class, and the Editorial Advisory Board of the “Justice, Politics and Power” book series at University of North Carolina Press. She served as President of the National Women’s Studies Association from 2016 – to 2018.

Dr. Ransby publishes regularly in popular venues, which include: DISSENT, In These Times, Colorlines, The Nation, the Boston Review, Truthout, and the New York Times. 

Dr. Ransby is not only a historian and writer but also a longtime activist.  She was deeply involved in the anti-Apartheid/ Free South Africa movement in the 1980s and later co-founded a number of organizations including: The Ella-Baker Nelson Mandela Center, Ella’s Daughters, and African American Women in Defense of Ourselves. She is a founding member of the national organization Scholars for Social Justice and works closely with The Movement for Black Lives and the multi-racial coalition, The Rising Majority. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Woods Fund of Chicago, and the grassroots Chicago-based, Equity and Transformation, (E.A.T.) a group that supports formerly incarcerated persons and those working in the informal economy.