Dogs, cats and graduation caps
By: Communications
Around 5,000 University of East Anglia (UEA) students returned to campus this week to celebrate their graduation with family, friends, and even some furry companions.
Held at the Sportspark on the UEA campus, undergraduate and postgraduate students from UEA’s 20 Schools of Study donned gowns and mortarboards, and received their degrees across 13 ceremonies.
There was sunshine, there was rain and there was even one student who completed a front flip after picking up his degree. Students were also able to enjoy live music, fresh food and get photos taken in the festival area.
Furry Friends
While the focus of the week was, unquestionably, to celebrate the successes of the thousands of graduates, attention was drawn, at times, to some of the cuddlier members of the audience, including; Lilo the corgi, Fifi the mortar board wearing pup, and a graduation cat called Huggy.
Graduation stories
Whilst every graduate’s achievement is notable, throughout the week there were some stories that stood out, whether it was the UEA alumni parents seeing their daughter complete her degree at the university where they met, or a nurse stepping out as a newly-qualified doctor and finally realising his dream.
Image left: Katy Tinmouth, who graduated from the School of Nursing, received a sweet surprise for her ceremony as she hadn’t realised her daughters, Erinma (right) and Shery (left) would be celebrating with her by wearing their very own mini-graduation outfits. Katy will start now work at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital following her degree.
Image middle: Jamie Mather, graduated with MBBS Medicine and will soon start work as a doctor at the James Paget University Hospital (JPUH) in Great Yarmouth. After initially missing out on the A-level grades he needed to study at UEA, Jamie, who comes from Norfolk, worked at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital (NNUH) during his gap year as a nursing assistant and then studied nursing at King's College London, before returning to NNUH as an A&E nurse.
Jamie said: “UEA was always my dream, and I always wanted to be a doctor. It was UEA or nothing, that was where I had my heart set on.
“Graduating is an emotional milestone, and it feels like such a happy end of an era. I don’t look back with any regret of how hard I’ve worked, and I'm glad to be celebrating it with my cohort because medicine is such a team sport and my friends will be at graduation. I couldn't have got over the line without them.”
Image right: Phalguni Bhatt and Rajiv Shah graduated from UEA in the 1980s with degrees in Economics and International Relations and Electronic Systems Engineering and were back in the city to watch their daughter, Maanya, graduate with BA (Hons) Politics and International Relations.
Asked what UEA means to her, Phalguni said:
“Three very quick and very wonderful years – academically and socially, an opportunity to live and study on a stunning campus and somewhere so different to Hong Kong where I grew up. And of course, it’s where Rajiv and I met.”
Rajiv, who was a founding member of UEA’s ‘Ghostbuster Society’, which, in his own words, “went looking for ghosts around the area, it was fantastic!”, was taken with the diversity of students at the University, saying:
“All the names we were hearing during Maanya’s graduation reflected the extent of of cultural diversity, both from the UK and internationally, which is great.”
UEA still features in the couple’s lives, even after more than 20 years. Phalguni said:
“We are still very good friends with a lot of the people we met at UEA and it’s always fun for us to meet up and reminisce about our memories and experiences at UEA.”
Hearing this from her mum, Maanya said:
“It’s been fun to watch you keep those friendships. It makes me realise the importance about keeping up my friendships as all of us are now going our separate ways. I hope many of us will be meeting up 20 years from now like my parents and their friends.”
Study International Relations and Politics
New Chancellor’s inauguration ceremony
During the first graduation ceremony, at 11am on Monday 15 July, Chancellor Dame Jenny Abramsky was inaugurated as UEA’s eighth Chancellor. Dame Jenny graduated from UEA in 1968 with a BA in English and has had a distinguished career at the BBC and in public life.
She said: “It’s a great honour to be sworn in as Chancellor at UEA, and I couldn’t think of a better occasion to receive such an honour than graduation, the biggest celebration in the university calendar.”
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