Overview

While still known as Connecticut Agricultural College, the University of Connecticut awarded its first master's degree in 1920 to Domingo B. Paguirigan, an Asian student from the Philippines. During the next two decades, 60 more master's degrees were awarded.

The Graduate School was established in 1940 and the first Ph.D.'s were awarded in 1949.

For nearly two decades, graduate degrees were conferred in the same ceremony as that of undergraduate degrees.

With the growth of the student body in the 1960s, a separate advanced degree ceremony was held for the first time in 1967, combining the Graduate School and the School of Law. In 1972, the first degree recipients from the Schools of Medicine and Dental Medicine joined the ceremony, and in 1973 the School of Law established its own separate ceremony.

Until 1980, all ceremonies were held at the main campus of the University in Storrs. Beginning in 1980, the ceremony for the School of Law moved to its campus in Hartford, and that of the Schools of Medicine and Dental Medicine moved to the UConn Health Center in Farmington.

Information on the History of Commencement pages was researched and compiled by Mark J. Roy