EDINBURG — Graduations at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley continued to shift back toward some sense of pre-pandemic normalcy with three commencement ceremonies held here at Bert Ogden Arena on Saturday.
A total of 3,908 graduates received a degree over the weekend, more than 3,000 of them attending three ceremonies in Edinburg. A ceremony was held in Brownsville on Friday for Lower Valley grads.
In the spring of 2020, the university held commencement ceremonies virtually.
As the pandemic abated and as vaccines became available, the university began to hold ceremonies primarily outdoors.
Saturday’s ceremonies were held indoors. Relatively few of the graduates wore masks and sat shoulder-to-shoulder down in the arena.
You could see them smile while they waved up at the stands or when a speaker commended them, and you could catch the occasional yawn at the 8:30 a.m. ceremony.
In short, it looked like a graduation again.
The commencement ceremony may have shed many of its pandemic-trappings, but the pandemic was clearly on the mind of students and staff at the ceremony.
“American higher education has not seen this for a century and yet you dealt with it, you persisted, you succeeded and you overcame in the most difficult of circumstances,” UTRGV President Guy Bailey said in a recorded address. “I can’t tell you how proud we are of you for doing that.”
Dean of the College of Sciences Vivian Incera also recognized those challenges.
“Graduating from college is never an easy achievement, but doing it during a pandemic is really extraordinary,” she said. “You have to be really proud of what you have accomplished.”
One of Saturday’s proud graduates is Isabella Rodriguez, who received a bachelor of science in biology and participated in the Vaqueros MD Early Assurance Program.
Just 19 years old, Rodriguez is the first graduate of that program, which means she’ll be automatically enrolled in the UTRGV School of Medicine’s 2022 cohort if she obtains a benchmark score on her MCAT, which she plans to take in January.
Rodriguez plans to use her medical education to practice family medicine.
“I like working with people of all different ages, and I like the idea of being able to treat mom and baby and grandma and grandpa as well,” she said.
In many ways, Saturday was Rodriguez’s first real graduation. She graduated from high school during the pandemic, and celebrations were pushed online.
Rodriguez was disappointed, but she said Saturday’s ceremony was a golden opportunity to make up for that lack of fanfare.
“So it was virtual, and I didn’t get to attend an in-person ceremony,” the Edinburg native said of her high school graduation. “Saturday was my first graduation, and normal is a great way to describe it, because it really did feel almost like there is no pandemic — which is a little sad, because that’s not the case yet, but it was a good relief and break from everything else that’s going on. To have that little sense of normalcy.”
The day went as well as Rodriguez had hoped. She graduated that morning, and planned to spend most of the rest of the day celebrating after she snuck in a brief nap.
“It felt amazing,” Rodriguez said.
View Monitor photojournalist Joel Martinez’s full photo gallery of the ceremonies here:
Photo Gallery: UTRGV commencement ceremonies at Bert Ogden Arena
