December 2022 graduation celebration

Dear colleagues and students

One of the biggest moments on the University of Cape Town (UCT)’s calendar, graduation, will take place on 14 and 15 December 2022.

Congratulations to all our graduands who will be capped at the summer graduation ceremonies. Our graduands studied through 2020 and 2021, the years which brought unprecedented challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Their strength and perseverance are truly admirable.

True to the African proverb, “it takes a village …”, it is important to equally acknowledge and congratulate UCT academics and support staff who walked alongside and worked with our graduands in supporting and encouraging them during their studies. This is not forgetting family and friends who offered unwavering support. This is their celebration too!

The graduation ceremonies will take place outside the Sarah Baartman Hall on upper campus.

The ceremonies will also be live-streamed so guests who are unable to attend can watch on the UCT News website (accessible from the UCT graduation web page) or the university’s social media platforms: Facebook and Twitter. Recordings of the ceremonies will be made available at a later stage on the UCT YouTube channel.

Important details regarding graduation have been sent to each graduand’s MyUCT email address.

The graduation celebrations will take place as follows:

During the Faculty of Health Sciences ceremony, the university will bestow high academic honours in the form of a degree awarded honoris causa on Professor Laetitia Rispel, a nurse by profession. Professor Rispel is an accomplished academic and public health leader, both nationally and internationally. She is Professor of Public Health at the University of the Witwatersrand where she holds a SARChI Chair titled “Research on the Health Workforce for Equity and Quality.” She is a consummate academic scholar, widely published with five books and 52 journal articles in the past eight years. She has also supervised and mentored seven PhD and 10 master’s students over the same period. In 2020, she completed a two-year term as the president of the World Federation of Public Health Associations, becoming the first woman from Africa, and the third in the more than 50-year history of the federation, to be elected to this prestigious position.

Graduands are reminded to please visit the graduation information page on the UCT Students website for important specific details about the December 2022 ceremonies.

We wish all our graduands the best in their future endeavours. We are incredibly proud of all you have achieved during your time at UCT and encourage you to please keep in touch with your alma mater through our alumni office as you are now part of the wider UCT family.

Sincerely

Professor Elelwani Ramugondo
Acting Vice-Chancellor

Read previous communications:

• From the UCT Executive
• Campus Announcements