Ceremony Challenges
In 2022, Virginia Tech Engineering’s commencement planner retired just two weeks before their Spring ceremony. When Dr. Marlena Lester, Director of Advising, took on the responsibility, she picked up day-of operations and decided to closely observe what could use improvement.
Marlena noticed that portions of the ceremonies lacked professionalism – timing of stage crossing was not always ideal, a few name readers stumbled on student names, and video displays of students were not branded and did not include student information. She hoped there was a solution available that could help.
“Immediately after commencement, I talked with the team about our challenges. The university’s special events office suggested making some improvements with MarchingOrder. I talked with our Dean as well, who recommended MarchingOrder, too,” Marlena said. When she looked at the available options, she decided to make the change for Virginia Tech Engineering’s next graduation cycle.
Getting Started
Marlena was interested in two key features – professional name recordings and branded graphics as the students walked across the stage.
“I’ve seen so many viral videos of name mispronunciations at commencements – that would be a nightmare!” Marlena explained. “We have a variety of diverse names, and even if someone at the school is trained or comfortable with all their phonetics, they can still make mistakes in the moment. It’s a lot of pressure to put on someone, so having the names pre-recorded by a professional felt like the best path forward.”
While working with MarchingOrder on the names features, they also decided to introduce the ability for a graduate to update their preferred name, if different from the official name on file. “We thought this option was the most inclusive,” Marlena said. “So many people go by different names, and this gave them the opportunity to be recognized as they wanted to be.”
Marlena and her commencement team also decided that designed and branded lower-thirds on the display screens would elevate their professionalism. “We thought it would really enhance our existing program.”
Her team, as well as the IT and accessibility teams, met with sales and customer success at MarchingOrder to get started in 2023. “Everything to adopt MarchingOrder was seamless. Onboarding, training, and the on-demand videos were all very helpful in getting set up,” Marlena said.
MarchingOrder in Action
After initial training, Marlena’s team spent the time prior to their Spring ceremonies importing graduate data and opening their graduate websites for students to register. Students indicated how many guests they were expecting so staff had accurate estimates for the venue, and downloaded their digital graduation cards. Easily accessed on their phones, these would be used to trigger their pre-recorded name reading and stage crossing graphic on the day of the ceremony.
The commencement team also worked with production staff to ensure that technical aspects of the ceremonies would go off without a hitch. They were pleased to find that MarchingOrder was as “plug-and-play” as they were promised, having no trouble getting set up with the older technology they had on site. “Everything worked great!” Marlena said.
On the day of the ceremonies, the commencement team set up a help desk for students who had any issues. They were able to print labels that had the same QR code as the digital graduation card so the graduate could present the label to be scanned if their phone died or was cracked. They also serviced students who forgot to register for the ceremony. They received special graduate cards that triggered a simple “Congratulations, Grad” message on the screen display while a live reader read their name.
“MarchingOrder was super easy to use,” Marlena explained. “The most tedious part of the process was scanning cards for the name readings and displays, but we were able to get faster throughout the day as we got used to it. And the pre-recorded names sounded great!”
As for the graphics that displayed while graduates walked across the stage, “It looked really sharp. Having the engineering logo, having the student’s name… it looked amazing!” Marlena was happy to report. “Plus, our photographer said that utilizing MarchingOrder made it easier to pull the list of graduate names to match to photos. It was a seamless integration with GradImages.”
The Future
Marlena’s concerns about professionalism and elevating the Virginia Tech brand were alleviated after their first ceremonies with MarchingOrder, seeing the timely stage crossings and branded displays, and hearing the high-quality name recordings. Marlena and the commencement team were impressed with MarchingOrder and plan on continuing to use the software for Virginia Tech Engineering’s ceremonies moving forward.
“The software was easy to use, and working with the MarchingOrder team was great. We could send questions to our Customer Success Manager and get answers quickly,” she concluded.
MarchingOrder successfully elevated Virginia Tech Engineering’s commencement ceremonies to a new level of professionalism, while providing students better options for name preferences and pronunciation. Is your institution interested in improving your graduations? Contact us today!
