Commencement

SA+P Advanced Degree Ceremony 2023

The SA+P Commencement Ceremony will take place on Thursday, June 1, at 11am in Kresge Auditorium.

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu to Give SA+P Advanced Degree Ceremony Address

The Honorable Michelle Wu, Mayor of the City of Boston, will deliver the keynote address to graduates and their guests at the Advanced Degree Ceremony in Kresge Auditorium.

About the speaker (from the Mayor’s website)

Michelle Wu is the Mayor of Boston. She is a daughter of immigrants, Boston Public Schools mom to two boys, MBTA commuter, and fierce believer that we can solve our deepest challenges through building community. As Mayor, Michelle is working in coalition to deliver bold, systemic change and make Boston a city for everyone.

Mayor Wu has been a voice for accessibility, transparency, and community engagement in city leadership. First elected to the Boston City Council in November 2013 at the age of 28, Wu is the first Asian-American woman to serve on the Council. In January 2016, she was elected President of the City Council by her colleagues in a unanimous vote, becoming the first woman of color to serve as Council President.

As a Councilor, Mayor Wu was the lead sponsor of Boston's Paid Parental Leave ordinance and Healthcare Equity ordinance prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity — both of which passed unanimously through the Council and were signed into law by former Mayor Martin J. Walsh. She also authored Boston’s Communications Access ordinance, which guarantees translation, interpretation and assistive technology for access to City services regardless of English language proficiency or communications disability.

Wu got her start in City Hall working for Mayor Thomas M. Menino as a Rappaport Fellow in Law and Public Policy, where she created the city’s first guide to the restaurant permitting process from start to finish, and was also a driving force to launch Boston’s food truck program. She later served as statewide Constituency Director in the U.S. Senate campaign of her former law professor, Elizabeth Warren.

As a former restaurant owner, legal services attorney, and legal guardian of her younger sister, Wu understands firsthand the barriers that families and communities face.  She has a background in community advocacy, having worked at the WilmerHale Legal Services Center in Jamaica Plain, providing legal advice to low-income small business owners, as well as at the Medical-Legal Partnership at Boston Medical Center on immigration law cases for survivors of domestic violence.

In 2016, Councilor Wu was honored as one of Ten Outstanding Young Leaders by the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce and as part of Marie Claire magazine’s New Guard: The 50 Most Influential Women in America.

Mayor Wu graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School. She is fluent in Mandarin and Spanish, and lives in Roslindale with her husband Conor and her sons Blaise and Cass.

Program (to come)

List of Graduating Students (to come)

Advance Information for Graduating Students  

Order tickets

Participating advanced degree candidates in the School of Architecture and Planning are eligible to receive up to four (4) guest tickets to the OneMIT Commencement Ceremony and four (4) guest tickets to the School of Architecture and Planning Advanced Degree Ceremony.

Submit a slide for the slideshow

Prior to your procession into Kresge, while your loved ones wait, we will play a slideshow highlighting your life at MIT. In addition to giving everyone a glimpse into your experience, this is also an opportunity for you to express your thanks to those who supported you. We ask that you create 1–3 slides that include any, or all, of the following:

• Images from your work (please include a caption and your name)
• Pictures that exemplify your life at MIT—spending time with friends, extracurriculars, internships, community service, etc.
• Acknowledgments—thank your loved ones, your faculty, your department staff, your friends

Please create your slides in PowerPoint and save them with your full name and department. For example: orta_monica_mas. Then upload your slides to Dropbox. Submit your slides by May 8.

Obtain regalia, PhD hoods, and masters cords

Learn about your regalia options. If you are ordering regalia, please do so by April 14.

PhD students: You will receive your hood on stage as part of the ceremony. Unlike the regalia that you may have chosen to rent, this hood is yours to keep as a symbol of your momentous achievement.

Masters students: As part of this new tradition of hosting a School ceremony, we have ordered cords for you. Each program has selected a cord color that represents them: red for Architecture, green for ACT, orange for DUSP, blue for CRE, and white for MAS. You should arrive wearing your cord over your gown. Cords can be picked up in 7-231 in late May. More information to come.

Provide name information

MIT is using an outside vendor called Name Coach to pre-record your name for use at the ceremony. With this system, you will be able to indicate how you want your name said at Commencement. This includes using a name that differs from your legal name. If you would like a different name printed on your diploma, please update your diploma name in Websis. More information about diploma name can be found on the registrar’s website. Directions for the Name Coach recordings will be sent out in May.

Advance Information for Faculty

For information about regalia and tickets, please visit MIT’s Commencement website.

SA+P Department Celebrations (details to come)

Additional MIT Celebrations

Black Graduate Celebration (BGC): April 21| 5–7pm

The Black Alumni of MIT (BAMIT) are planning the upcoming 2023 Black Graduation Celebration (BGC), tentatively scheduled for April 2023. The theme will be “The Ache for Home,” a reference to a quote by Maya Angelou. Please visit BAMIT for updates.

Lavender Graduation: May 4 | 4:30pm

Lavender Graduation is a celebration of the end of the year and a recognition of our distinguished graduates from the LBGTQ+ and ally community. This year's celebration is scheduled for May 4, 4:30pm, at Burton-Conner Porter Room. If you have any questions, please email Lauryn McNair (lmcnair@mit.edu) or Jeremy Torres (ejtorres@mit.edu). All are welcome during this end-of-the-year community-wide celebration! Please visit LBGTQ+ Services' website for more information.

Latinx Graduation: May 31 | 9am–1pm

The Latinx Graduate Students Association (LGSA) and Latino Cultural Center (LCC) are coming together to plan MIT’s first-ever Latinx-focused graduation celebration for undergraduate and graduate students alike on May 31 from 9am to 1pm at the MIT Media Lab. Our collective vision is to have an esteemed guest speaker who will be introduced by faculty, alumni, and the leaders of the Latinx student organizations, on a day that will include refreshments and photo opportunities of the awarding of stoles to be worn by graduates during the OneMIT Commencement ceremony the following day. We hope this groundbreaking event will honor the sacrifices of both our students and their families and will become an established tradition for years to come. Latinx Graduating students can reserve a stole and RSVP form by April 21, 2023.

MOSAIC Graduation: June 1 | 8–10pm

MOSAIC (MIT Outstanding Scholars: Achieve. Inspire. Change.) is a celebration of our graduates sponsored by Intercultural Engagement (i.e.), the Office of Minority Education, and the Office of Graduate Education. Open to the entire MIT community and to the family and friends of MIT graduates, this celebration traditionally takes place in June. Following the OneMIT Ceremony on Killian Court, this year's MOSAIC event will be a formal dance from 8 to 10pm at Walker (Building 50). Please visit the i.e.'s website for updates and additional information.

Questions about the SA+P Advanced Degree Ceremony?

Email: sap_graduation@mit.edu