Strathclyde Business School: 2021, November 25th 10am
on behalf of the university of strathclyde i welcome you all to the barney hall for today's congregation for the conferment of degrees it's a very special day it's been a a long period since we last had our graduations it was in november 2019 uh before the the coronavirus pandemic took hold that we had those and we never ever thought that there would be such a gap between the graduations so we're absolutely delighted that we're here today and it's special for a number of different people not only just the graduates but for the family and friends who have all have come here today to be with you and and i know how difficult it's been the the journey that you've been on over the past 12 months uh trying to to get through life with all these restrictions and i know how difficult it is as a parent myself and in terms of helping your children and your friends just to get through the studies when it can be quite a lonely time and so i know how special it is for for those of you who are here and also for those who can't actually make it but they're thinking of you today and it's very special for our staff our staff have had to work under very challenging circumstances to give you the education that you deserve the very best that we can give you and they are delighted for you as well when we get to the end of this journey and graduation ceremonies they're also known in other countries as commencement ceremonies the commencement ceremony is because although you're ending a journey but you're actually beginning a new journey a new phase of your life and at strathclyde we embody that concept of the change from the being a graduate being a student to being a graduate graduate and being an alumna or an alumnus and you can see that in the way in which we have our ceremony when each of you individually will walk up the stairs and you walk towards me and it's like the end of a journey and then you'll come to me and i will cap you and i'll cap you and that's when you become a graduate as you move from that graduand to the student to being a graduate and then you walk off and you walk off in a new phase of your life joining more than 175 000 strathclyde graduates around the world and 40 000 business school graduates after the ceremony we will have an academic procession on the academic procession we'll walk from here all the way to our newest building our learning and teaching building which we opened in the summer and there you'll be able to have some refreshments and have an opportunity to to chat to the staff and and to each other so as i said it's a very special time for us all and and for those of you who are here to celebrate with with your loved ones please feel free that when your your loved one comes up to get capped to have that mark of achievement celebrate with them appreciate the time and and celebrate in your own way you know if you want to cheer or you want to clap loudly that's it's entirely up to you we just want to enjoy yourselves today so without further ado i am now going to declare this congregation open and i will invite professor susan howick who is the vice dean of strathclyde business school to present our graduates executive dean in the name of the university and by the authority of senate i present to you these students for the degree of master of science in digital marketing management temitope timothy alabi nicholas james barkley lakshy bhatia [Applause] ross bogdan chanowsky elena cristo kieran emil kayton gomes chamberlain fraser stuart graham [Applause] anastasia emperor amy christina ferguson kennedy mercelli means [Applause] rachel mccormick [Applause] natalie ann mcginnis ewing william mckinney blair mcmahon [Applause] hayley michael [Applause] fiona kirsten sutherland robert finley watson [Applause] emma louise wyatt [Applause] zina zaki [Applause] daniela zander [Applause] in innovation and marketing management ben dixon [Applause] sean george mitchell [Applause] aventika sutakur [Applause] in marketing annual rachel bersokas [Applause] alex jillian boyd [Applause] ciaolen zai [Applause] chan [Applause] christiana dimitrian [Applause] jennifer alice edwards kyle fleming shizuka hayashi [Applause] megan beth louder [Applause] milka lorena marburg i gotta mike [Applause] nathan murjani anna nesterova [Applause] ewing mark patterson [Applause] stephen aleister ray axa riaz [Applause] emma claire rickard [Applause] amy francis scott [Applause] tanu sharma [Applause] angus livingston buchanan shearer lee patrick james shields [Applause] song sue [Applause] for the degree of bachelor of arts in marketing and business enterprise estera sandra nowak [Applause] for the degree of postgraduate diploma in marketing wage on two hmm ladies and gentlemen colleagues but most of all are graduates i warmly welcome you once again to this special ceremony and memorable day a day that marks the culmination of a sustained period of demanding work and dedication for our new graduates you've graduated in front of your family your friends and peers so i begin my address by congratulating you our class of 2021 on your achievements during very challenging circumstances congratulations [Applause] in a short while as i said earlier you'll be invited to join an academic procession when we we leave the hall this is a symbol that you're no longer students but full members of the academic community at the university of strathclyde and one that numbers over 175 000 people across the world this november we are celebrating our first in-person graduation ceremonies since the beginning of the coronavirus epidemic the pandemic has challenged our health systems impacted our economies and changed the way we work but it is also demonstrated what society can achieve when we work together and it has placed science and business at the forefront of the solutions to the challenges that we face but it was science and business and universities that delivered vaccines for the covered 19 virus in record time and it is science and education that will help us address the most pressing issue of our day climate change earlier earlier this month as you know glasgow hosted cop 26 the summit of the world leaders and nations which came together to agree measures to prevent catastrophic warming of our planet but we must also recognize that the challenges of coronavirus and climate change have exposed divisions in our societies weaknesses in our systems and even seen the denial of science and expert knowledge the university of strathclyde is an institution where freedom of thought is encouraged and valued as an institution exemplified by tolerance and inclusivity one which seeks to play a significant role in shaping the world in which we live through our teaching our research and through you are graduates now as graduates of strathclyde you too must play your part in drawing upon the knowledge that you've gained here and the learning that is still to come to build a brighter future using the the business principles the the marketing skills that you've learned to solve the pressing challenges that we face cop 26 saw former president barack obama come to strathclyde and he spoke with the students about the important role of of youth and young people and how you can help tackle climate change and mr obama had a simple but incredibly powerful message get active and that's an appeal that i ask you our graduates to act upon and in getting active i hope you will demonstrate strathclyde's socially progressive values and ethos of tolerance pluralism and a desire to make a positive difference in reaching this moment you will all have had the support and encouragement of your supporters your families your friends your teachers and your mentors some of them are here today but obviously because of social distancing we were unable to to fit everyone in and there'll be a lot of people thinking of you you know at this point in time and and i'm sure that you wouldn't have got through this without without them so i'm now going to ask you to take this opportunity to show your appreciation and gratitude with a sincerely felt round of applause for those here and for those who can't be here [Applause] similarly similarly you've all been held by our wonderful staff who have worked so hard under the most challenging of circumstances to provide you with a first-class education and an outstanding student experience and for whom your success is their reward it's i've been working with with our staff you know through the the pandemic and the amount of additional work that they've put in to try and adapt everything that we've done has been absolutely incredible and so i would like to on behalf of all of you thank all of our staff here for the work that they've done thank you very much so your success and in our success as a university is in no small part due to the efforts of our staff who deliver our vision of strathclyde as a socially progressive leading international technological university of all the key figures in our history professor john anderson was the one who made it possible back in 1796 at the end of the scottish enlightenment and strathclyde was founded for the benefit of all humankind to be a place of useful learning and anderson believed in knowledge for the greater good and education for all and we call it widening participation today strathclyde is at the forefront of widening access to higher education and we welcome everyone with the ability and the desire to learn regardless of their personal circumstances is something that we're incredibly proud of as an institution we're a research intensive university whose vision is to make a positive difference to the lives of our students society and the world through our groundbreaking research we are helping to change the world for the better our researchers are leading the development of innovative technologies that will facilitate the transition from fossil fuels to clean sustainable energy sources such as wind solar and hydrogen and we hope those will power the future world and tackle climate change and our business school academics and particularly our marketing academics are at the very heart of these endeavors through their research we have experts in in consumer marketing digital marketing open innovation all sitting here on stage today and they're working to help this world be a better place we're developing new drugs using new digital manufacturing processes that will provide cheaper more effective treatments in the fight against cancer kidney diseases and inflammatory diseases while also helping our health services evolve to face the challenges of health and social care in the changing demographics of the 21st century and through our focus on entrepreneurial education we're helping students and staff and our graduates like you to create new businesses with sustainability in mind and these are in turn creating new jobs and supporting economic growth we're leading the revitalization of this part of the city through the glasgow city innovation district and we're attracting companies both large and small to work here in the university to create new ideas technologies and solutions to a range of problems and you might have seen our technology and innovation center down at the bottom of the hill and we're going to be looking to build another two buildings tied to that we're working in areas like healthtech fintech 5g industrial informatics space and quantum and much of that is based on our campus as a university we continually work to enhance our students experience investing in our campus as evidenced by the new strathclyde sport building and also the the learning and teaching building that we'll be in uh later on today and we're investing in health and well-being services and we're putting our students at the heart of everything we do our progress and our efforts in all of these areas have been recognized in recent years with a host of awards we became the only university to win the times higher education uk university of the year twice the last time was in 2019 we've been named business school of the year workplace of the year and having research project of the year as well all just in the last say five six years and despite the many challenges that we faced as a university particularly over the last 20 odd months straight like business school has had reason to celebrate and in particularly the marketing department has had reason to celebrate you may not know this but this is the 50th anniversary of the department of marketing it's one of the oldest and most well-established departments of marketing in europe we were incredibly proud to have received a 50 million pounds donation from an alumnus of the department of marketing and he wanted to gift the university this 50 million pounds to honor us and to also recognize that the help that we have provided him so doctor charles swang and through his philanthropic donation he is a awarded 20 million pounds to the business school and particularly the department of marketing and that's going to allow us to create an institute for international business a global leaders scholarship program and also a number of entrepreneurship awards which we've already started awarding and all of these different uh things are all been named after his supervisor professor stephen young who sadly passed away just before we received the the gift and i was with charles and charles is now a billionaire now and i said to him i was having dinner with him just a couple of months ago and and asked him and said look you know what we where did you stay when you were here and he was here in the 90s and he said i stayed you know when i was just a student i stayed in a place called the red road flats some of you might know that it was in sight helen it was a place where the the you know the less privileged people in society you know just this working class day and a lot of asylum seekers stayed and um people who are just looking to make a new life and they've been knocked down now and and he said i said why did you stay there he says well there's only place that i could stay but i wanted to come to strathclyde because it was strathclyde and particularly the department of marketing that had the the skill set and the knowledge that i needed i felt that i needed and then i asked them well why did you why are you feeling like you want to donate the money you know it's such a large gift in fact it's the largest gift in scottish university history and he said the reason is because of the staff i when i graduated i went back to china and i had faced many challenges like you will all face in your in your life especially in your time coming out as you get through your career and he said i always felt able to go back to the department and ask the staff advice help guidance and that's something that really epitomizes strathclyde strathclyde is a place that you know when you leave here it's not the end of of this journey that's the beginning you know and please feel part of this family of over 175 000 people please come back to us keep in touch with us because you are now strathclyders you're our ambassadors for the future and we hope you will be as successful as charles even if you're not that you make a difference to the world and you be the best you can be and if you do that then you will make strathclyde proud and will be delighted to hear from you the other 30 million pounds is going to be used to build two more sustainable buildings to attract more companies more researchers into the university so it's been a fantastic year and i want to just and i suppose another final point i want to make is the the rankings uh we've had the most recently it was a complete university guide 2022 and your department the marketing department was ranked third in the whole of the uk for marketing that's an incredible achievement you're part of one of the top marketing departments in the whole of the uk and we're proud of that and we know you'll be proud of that and as with immense pride we see you graduate today and though you may be leaving us as i said you are part of our strathclyde family you are a strathclyde and you'll always be a strathclyde and we hope you'll continue to stay in touch you'll let us know how you get on and continue to contribute to strathclyde's activities as an alumni or as an alumnus and help us educate the future cohorts of marketing students uh in the business school so it's your day it's time for you to celebrate now with with your loved ones so on behalf of the university of strathclyde congratulations again to each and every one of you and i wish you every success for the future thank you so it's coming to the end of our ceremony today um the coronavirus epidemic has changed many things we've got obviously social distancing and one of the things that i found out is that this this piece here this used to be where people get graduated and when you came on the stage you would kneel here and then get capped but now we have it to make sure we've got social distancing but if any of you have got grandparents or parents it's probably very likely that they would have actually been here and if they graduated from strathclyde and they would have actually knelt here so it's a nice point i realized yesterday another graduation when our principal was telling us about this so now that we've finished we're going to have the academic procession um the academics will move out and then we ask the graduates to then follow us to have that procession up to the learning and teaching building and once the graduates have left we then ask if the friends and family are here if you can then follow on after that so i now declare this congregation closed and please be upstanding [Music] you
2021-12-01 07:09
