Campus & Community / Magazine Feature

Spring commencement ceremonies to feature streaming video

The University of Denver’s spring Commencement ceremonies will include live Web coverage, including real-time streaming video, for the first time this year. As in the past, there will be three Commencement ceremonies: law, graduate and undergraduate.

“It’s like a long snake of data from the camera to the user’s Web page,” explains Computer Lab Specialist Andrew Hunt. He says images from the camera are fed into a Mac PowerBook, which turns the video into a stream of bits before sending it on to a server. From the server, the data is pulled onto the Web for viewing on the Commencement Web site.

The process involves staff from University Technology Services, the Ritchie Center, the Center for Teaching and Learning and the Office of Communications and Marketing.

“It provides an additional service to graduating students and their family and friends,” says Chris Stewart, director of Web communications.

Besides the live stream, Stewart says the video will be available on-demand on the Commencement site the week after each ceremony. He says it takes 10 minutes to encode each minute of video, and encoding is just one step in making the video ready for on-demand use. DVD and VHS recordings will be available for purchase as well.

The Sturm College of Law ceremony will take place May 19 at 10 a.m. Colorado Attorney General John Suthers will give the Commencement address. Suthers has been a public servant since he earned his law degree in 1977. In his tenure as attorney general, Suthers has focused on programs that protect children from Internet predators and that reduce mortgage and foreclosure fraud.

Jerome Wartgow (PhD ’72), former superintendent and CEO of Denver Public Schools, will speak at the graduate Commencement ceremony on June 8 at 5 p.m. Wartgow, who started his educational career as a high school math teacher, is now on the board of directors for the Denver Public Schools Foundation, the Education Foundation and the educational publishing firm Scholar Centric.

The undergraduate ceremony will take place June 9 at 10 a.m. Thomas Marsico (MBA ’79) will deliver the Commencement address. Marsico is founder, CEO and CIO of Marsico Capital Management, which since 1997 has been the investment adviser to the Marsico Funds. He and his wife Cydney Marsico (BSBA ’78, MBA ’80) created DU’s Marsico Initiative, which is dedicated to boosting undergraduate academic intensity in the arts and sciences.

Spring Commencement ceremonies will take place in the Ritchie Center’s Magness Arena. Tickets are not required. Audience members should be seated 30 minutes before the ceremony begins.

For more information about Commencement, see www.du.edu/commencement/.

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