Approximately 700 Cal Poly students will walk across the university’s commencement stage, hear their names called and shake Cal Poly President Jeffrey Armstrong’s hand as they pass from student to graduate on Dec. 8.
December Commencement is one of two commencement ceremonies Cal Poly holds each year; the first and largest being June Commencement. About 3,000 Cal Poly students graduate each June, but because December Commencement is so much smaller, it is often a more personal and warm ceremony, said Student Life and Leadership Commencement Assistant Marie Cole.
“That’s a much more individualized-focused ceremony,” Cole said.
December Commencement is broken into three ceremonies, with grads from two of Cal Poly’s six colleges at each ceremony.
This year, students from the College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences and the College of Science and Mathematics walk the stage at 9 a.m. The College of Architecture and Environmental Design and the College of Liberal Arts students walk at 1 p.m., while the Orfalea College of Business and College of Engineering grads walk in the late afternoon at 4 p.m.
All together, about 250 graduates are recognized in each ceremony for their studies at Cal Poly, Cole said.
“It’s a celebration of their accomplishments,” Cole said.
After they walk across the stage, those graduates are heading onto new lives and careers, for which their education has hopefully prepared them.
The first step for a graduate after commencement is probably getting started in a job, Cole said.
“I would assume it would be finding a job,” Cole said.
And those graduates’ time at Cal Poly often prepares them for those jobs, according to Career Services’ 2010-11 Graduate Status Report.
Sixty-eight percent of survey respondents were working in full-time jobs, while 91 percent of students working or pursuing a graduate degree said their work was directly related to their field of study at Cal Poly.
More than 54 percent of graduates responded to the survey, creating an accurate representation of the job situation of Cal Poly grads, Career Services counselor Carole Moore said.
“We ask every possible direction,” Moore said.
And this year, the job outlook for many graduating Cal Poly students looks even more hopeful than the 2010-11 school year, Moore said.
From Career Services’ standpoint, job postings, offers and interviews have been up, Moore said. On MustangJOBS, Career Services’ own job search website, job postings were up 23 percent from this time last year, and up 192 percent from Fall 2009, according to Career Services recruiting assistant Lauren Platte.
Though Moore won’t have the results of the 2011-12 Graduate Status Report until May, the outlook is bright for grads right now, she said.
“As far as activity goes it’s very encouraging,” Moore said.
Victoria Billings contributed to this report.