2022 Commencement at a Glance

Students in full regalia gathered with their classmates and processed together to hear their names called as they join the great community of graduates stretching all the way back to 1883.

Close up of a UConn-decorated mortarboard

A decorated mortarboard at the 2022 School of Fine Arts Commencement ceremony at the Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts. May 7, 2022. (Sean Flynn/UConn Photo)

For the members of the Class of 2022 who arrived as first-year students in the fall of 2018, “normal” is a distant memory of that initial academic year, the last year before quarantines and masks and social distancing and everything else that falls under the rubric “unprecedented times.”

What’s been “normal” for these students since then has been a demonstration of resilience, commitment, and versatility that surpasses anything that could have been expected of them back in those hazy days of 2018. This is a class that has improvised, adapted, and overcome, en route to whatever challenges life presents them with next.

But first, there’s the celebration. For the first time since 2019, that took place in its traditional locations. Students in full regalia gathered with their classmates and processed together to Gampel Pavilion and the Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts to hear their names called as they join the great community of graduates stretching all the way back to 1883.

After the last four years, that felt spectacular, wonderful, and earned through a combination of individual effort and collective support – in other words, for Huskies, it felt normal.

Here are some special moments from those ceremonies, captured by UConn photographers Peter Morenus and Sean Flynn.