Glad grads at UC Irvine

UC Irvine is expected to award a record number of doctorates this year, officials announced as the university's three-day graduation kicked off Friday.

According to Court Crowther, the assistant dean for planning and administration for UCI's graduate division, the university's 298 doctorates this year are an all-time high. Shortly after the turn of the century, UCI began seeing an increase in graduate students, and the results were starting to show at commencement, Crowther said.

"We're just really proud of this record-breaking number of degrees conferred," he said. "That's what we're in the business for."

The campus is also set to award approximately 5,500 bachelor's degrees and 1,000 master's degrees.

Spokesman Allan Taing said the overall increase in number of degrees wasn't as steep as in the last few years, but that the numbers would likely accelerate in the coming years due to growing freshman enrollment.

"I think it just reflects UC Irvine's strategic plan to increase the number of graduate and undergraduate students in our programs," Taing said.

The commencements began Friday with students from the Henry Samueli School of Engineering walking at 9 a.m. in the Bren Events Center. The School of Social Sciences began honoring graduates in the Bren center at 1 p.m.

On the docket for today are the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences and the School of Social Ecology, with the Paul Merage School of Business, School of Humanities, Claire Trevor School of the Arts and School of Biological Sciences set to walk Sunday.