With more than 600 degree dandidates from the BSM program, the Freeman School divided this year’s undergraduate diploma ceremony into two: One for finance majors, and one for all other majors.
With more than 700 combined degree candidates set to participate in 2024 graduation festivities, the Freeman School did something it had never done before: Host three ceremonies.
On May 17, the Freeman School hosted two diploma ceremonies for undergraduate candidates and one for master’s and PhD candidates.
“This was the ‘COVID class,’ the students whose high school graduations were cancelled due to the pandemic, so there was pent-up demand among students and their families to experience a graduation ceremony with all the pomp and circumstance,” said Freeman School Dean Paulo Goes. “By splitting the undergraduate ceremony into two — one for finance majors and one for all other majors — we were able to do away with tickets and open the ceremonies to whomever wished to attend.”
That decision was greeted enthusiastically, with thousands of family members and friends filling Avron B. Fogelman Arena at Devlin Fieldhouse to celebrate Commencement 2024.
Jillian Parish (BSM ’24) received the BSM Scholastic Achievement Award, which recognizes the graduating Bachelor of Science in Management student with the highest cumulative grade point average, and Paymon Rezaii (MD / MBA ’24) received the Marta and Peter Bordeaux Scholastic Achievement Award, which recognizes the graduating MBA student with the highest cumulative grade point average.
“Today, you bid us farewell after spending time as our neighbor, friend, classmate and student,” Goes said at the ceremonies’ conclusion. “Everything you have done up to this moment — your academic training, your professional and extracurricular activities, your friendships and relationships, your hobbies and interests, the disappointments you’ve faced and the challenges you’ve overcome — all of these things have prepared you for this moment in time and this moment in your lives. You are ready for your journey. Congratulations, good luck and best wishes.”
