UC Santa Barbara kicked off its graduation weekend Friday with the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management commencement ceremony in the morning and the graduate division commencement ceremony in the afternoon.
Between undergraduate and graduate students, UCSB is awarding degrees to a total of 6,761 students in its class of 2023.
The school honored 537 students earning advanced graduate degrees Friday afternoon — 263 doctoral degrees and 274 master’s degrees.
Interim Anne and Michael Towbes Graduate Dean Leila Rupp said it’s the most graduate degrees awarded in UCSB’s history.
“You have inspired us with your intelligence, your curiosity, your adaptability, your perseverance, your accomplishments, and especially your endurance,” UCSB Chancellor Henry Yang told the graduates. “We will always remember your courage and resilience in the face of a global pandemic that turned the whole world upside down.”
Yang said that U.S. News and World Report ranked UCSB No. 7 among all public universities in the country this year, as well as one of the universities with the seventh-highest diversity index rating.
Teacher Education Program candidate Chris Chien delivered the student address for the graduate division ceremony.
“I would like today to be a day about gratitude and love,” Chien said to his fellow graduates. “You have all shown a great deal of commitment to be sitting where you are now. I hope that you will allow yourself space to feel pride in what you have accomplished. … As you move on from the commitments you have fulfilled at the university and begin to pursue the next ambitions of your life, I have but one request to ask of each of you — in whatever it is you do, in wherever it is you are, I kindly ask that you commit yourself to the human experience.”
During Friday’s graduate division commencement ceremony, the school also announced the winners of the Winifred and Louis Lancaster Dissertation Awards, for which departments nominate students and a faculty committee selects the winners.
“[The award is] named after two community leaders who contributed their time, talent and financial resources to many local institutions, including UC Santa Barbara, for more than 50 years,” Rupp said. “The two Lancaster Dissertation Awards are entered into the national competition sponsored by the Council of Graduate Schools. In past years, two Lancaster Award winners from UC Santa Barbara have been recipients of the national prize.”
For the field of biological and life sciences, Thomas Lankiewicz won the award for his dissertation titled “Biochemical Characterization of Neocallimastigomycetes for the Development of Lignocellulose Conversion Technologies Using Synthetic Biology,” and Sergey Salushchev won the award for the humanities and fine arts field with his dissertation titled “Reluctant Abolitionists: Slavery, Dependency, and Abolition in the Caucasus (1801-1914).”
Other UCSB commencement ceremonies taking place throughout the weekend include the math, life and physical sciences departments at 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. Saturday, the College of Engineering at 4 p.m. Saturday, the social sciences departments at 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. Sunday, and the humanities and fine arts departments at 4 p.m. Sunday — all of which occurring on the campus’ Commencement Green.
More information on the dates and times for specific departments can be found on UCSB’s commencement schedule webpage here.