Congratulations on being chosen by your college to guide your fellow graduating students and ensure that they understand how to sign in, line up, process, and recess in an orderly (and efficient!) manner during one of the most important days of their lives! Your service as a marshal is crucial to the success of UA Little Rock’s commencement ceremonies and we thank you for your willingness to assist. It is an honor to be selected as a student marshal!
There will be a brief training scheduled for Friday, December 15, at 2 p.m. that you are required to attend. Student marshals will receive their commencement honor stole at the mandatory meeting.
- Please be at your assigned college in the Derek Fisher Court of the Jack Stephens Center by 8:00 a.m. on Saturday, December 16. The doors will open at 7:45 a.m.
- We recommend that you wear comfortable shoes! Your job will be to work with the faculty marshals in your designated college area and ensure that students arriving in the Derek Fisher Court sign in and line up with the correct college. There will be two faculty marshals and two student marshals each assigned to the academic colleges with undergraduates. Bowen Law School and the Graduate School will only be assigned faculty marshals.
- Do not line up alphabetically with the other graduates in your college. You will immediately follow the faculty marshals into the arena area. Please note that all graduate students will line up with the Graduate School and not with the undergraduate students in their college.
- You will direct your fellow graduates to sign in using the electronic system and then obtain a printed card from the faculty marshal that will be used for pictures and the announcement of the names of the graduates as they walk across the stage. Students will keep the card until they are ready to cross the stage. At that time, a commencement worker will take the card and give it to the person who will announce the student. Students are not to write on the printed cards.
- Honor recognition cards for the students in your college who will be recognized for university academic honors during the commencement ceremony will automatically be printed for those specific students. This card is identical to the other printed cards with the exception that the honor will also be printed on the card. The students are not to make adjustments to the card. They will only announce honors for students who have these cards.
- Once students sign in and obtain their printed cards from their faculty marshal, they may choose to line up at the back of Fisher Court for additional commencement photos (photos will also be taken of students during the commencement ceremony as they receive their diploma covers on stage). Students will receive proofs of their photos soon after the commencement ceremony via their ualr.edu email. At that time, they may order pictures if they choose.
- When students return to the college area in Fisher Court after taking any additional commencement photos, please group students in alphabetical order regardless of their major (order doesn’t have to be exact within letter groups as long as students with last names ending in A are lined up with other students with last names ending in A, etc.).
- Tassels should be worn on the right side while in Fisher Court.
- No personal belongings should be left by any graduate in Fisher Court as there will be no one remaining there to ensure security.
- If you have any questions while serving in Fisher Court, please see one of the faculty marshals assigned to your college. Once the procession begins in the Jack Stephens arena, please do not ask the commencement volunteers who are assisting in seating the graduating students questions, as they will not be able to answer at that point in the ceremony.
- You will be led to the stage by the faculty marshal.