Graduation
Higher Education Graduation – Celebrating Achievement
Each year we celebrate the achievements of our Higher Education students in a graduation ceremony held at Rotherham United’s AESSEAL New York Stadium, accommodating hundreds of proud families and students graduating from a huge variety of classes.
This year, we celebrated our graduation ceremony on Thursday 28th November.
About the Venue
The AESSEAL New York Stadium is the home of Rotherham United Football Club. Located on the outskirts of Rotherham city centre, it is a 12,000 capacity stadium with fabulous function spaces.
The New York Stadium has everything we need to ensure our graduands have the very best graduation ceremony.
Graduation Ceremony 2024
The graduation celebrations of 2024 took place on Tuesday 28th November, commemorating the success of graduates from the RNN Group of Colleges courses, including Rotherham College, North Notts College and Dearne Valley College, and University Centre Rotherham (UCR).
The ceremony included inspirational guest speakers, a brass band, commemorative certificates and a sea of graduands in caps and gowns, surrounded by proud families and friends.
Read more about our 2024 graduation here and take a look at some highlights of the day below:
Our previous graduation ceremonies can be viewed below:
Graduation 2023
Graduation 2022
What to expect on graduation day
How to sign up to graduation
FAQs
Student ID
If you do not have your student ID to book your gown, or the ID is not working, please call our Higher Education Team on 01709 722806.
Gowning or Ticketing Queries
Please contact the Gowning Company direct for any queries. You can contact them at sales@graduationceremony.co.uk or call 01234 880956.
Extended Hire
Allows graduates to pay to extend their hire for five days, and then mail the garments back to the gowning company with a provided prepaid return label.
This is great if you want to go out for a meal or drinks afterwards wearing your academic dress and/or have photos with people who were not able to attend on the day.
There is an extra charge for this, please see the booking form.
Extra Guest Tickets
All bookings come with two guest tickets, please state how many extra guest tickets you may want if they become available. This will depend upon numbers who have booked.
Children
We want the whole family to enjoy your celebrations, but we recommend children under 5 do not attend the actual ceremony. For this reason, we are live streaming to the social lounge where families with under 5’s can watch on the screens.
They can see you before the ceremony in your gown and if you have booked family photography, they can have their photos with you, and then celebrate after the ceremony too.
Access Requirements
The Ceremony Suite and Social Lounge are on Floor 1 and Floor 2, there is a small passenger lift, please let the gowning company know if you, or anyone in your party has any mobility issues or needs wheelchair access/seating space.
This includes anyone who may have limited mobility for stairs. As there are a lot of stairs, please consider your footwear.
Ceremony Information
The ceremony is just under 1½ hours long, there will be guest speakers and certificate presentation.
We will allocate morning or afternoon ceremony once we have all the bookings so that we can ensure each ceremony has the optimum number of guests.
The closing date for booking is Monday 23rd September at 5pm.
Why Graduands and Graduates?
You may wonder why we use the term graduand and graduate.
A graduand is a student who is about to receive their qualification. After the ceremony, once you have graduated, you become a graduate!