Sadly, due to Covid-19, we couldn’t host graduation ceremonies this summer at Gilmorehill or Dumfries. While these ceremonies will be rearranged when it is safe to do so, we wanted to celebrate our incredible Class of 2020 this week, as they received their results.

While many colleagues organised their own personal celebrations for their students on Zoom or via other virtual means, we hosted a week of online celebrations across the UofG social media channels. The week included celebratory stories of individual achievements as well as special video messages from members of Team UofG, alumni and friends.

We had some fantastic results – both hashtags #UofGgrad20 and #TeamUofG were trending in the UK on Twitter and our videos had over 500k views and counting.

Thank you to everyone who got involved in the campaign – to make our graduates feel special at this difficult time.

Here are some of our content highlights:

 

Principal, Professor Sir Anton Muscatelli

We started the week with a moving speech from the Principal, Professor Sir Anton Muscatelli

 

Virtual Choir

Each year our graduation ceremonies begin with graduates and guests singing Gaudeamus Igitur as the academic procession arrive.

As we sadly couldn’t be together to sing this year; students, staff, alumni & friends came together virtually with our brilliant Chapel Choir to keep up this tradition.

Katy Cooper, Choir Director and Kevin Bowyer, University Organist made videos to teach the song then Katy expertly combined videos from our community with the voices from the choir to make this beautiful piece.

Thank you to everyone who joined our virtual choir!

 

 

Dame Katherine Grainger

Our new Chancellor, Dame Katherine Grainger, who should have been overseeing her first UofG graduation ceremonies, sent a special message to our new graduates.

 

UofG Future World Changer

(CW: Video discusses sexual assault and suicidal feelings)

Like we do for physical ceremonies, we also shared content celebrating individual achievements, like UofG graduate Rebekah Cheung. Bekah was sadly sexually assaulted 3 years ago but has used this awful experience to help other survivors while also achieving her degree. 

If you've been affected by any issues raised in this video, please reach out to speak to someone and visit the following pages for UofG support and resources - First responders and counselling and support

 


Nicola Sturgeon MSP

We also shared messages from our alumni community – the first being a wonderful message from UofG alumna and the First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon.

 

Family & Friends

Proud families and friends always make graduations so for the final day of celebrations, we shared messages from our community which we crowdsourced via our social media channels. We received over 120 messages for our graduates.

YouTube video

We also loved sharing all our students’ photos and videos and seeing all the different ways they were celebrating their graduations.

 

Website

As part of the campaign, we created a dedicated UofG graduation website – www.glasgow.ac.uk/grad20 so colleagues and students could download #UofGgrad20 Zoom backgrounds, view our customised gifs, stickers and filters, find out about alumni benefits and postgraduate study options as well as view the UofG Class of 2020 Wall of Fame.

 

Instagram Filters

Although graduates couldn’t take photos in the quads like they usually do, they could use our new Instagram filters to place themselves back on campus to virtually celebrate. The 15 new filters feature different areas of campus (Gilmorehill, Garscube and Dumfries) which people can superimpose themselves in while we are missing UofG!

To use these, visit: http://instagram.com/uofglasgow

 Photo of woman in quads in Instagram filter

 

Gifs

We created a number of customised gifs and stickers or people to use to congratulate our graduates when they received their results. View them on giphy – www.giphy.com/uofglasgow or search #TeamUofG on Instagram or Twitter.

Screenshot of University GIPHY account 

 

Thank You

Thank you to all our colleagues who embraced this online graduation week and helped amplify the campaign by sharing videos, photos and stories on their social media channels and celebrating the wonderful Class of 2020.

Including the School of Education, who had this special message to their new Education graduates from comedian and writer Janey Godley, which received over 100k views.

To see more great content from across UofG search for the hashtag: #UofGgrad20

First published: 2 July 2020

<< 3 July 2020