Commencement at CCSU

Central Connecticut State University's annual undergraduate commencement exercises are held each May at the XL Center in Hartford. At present, this is the only occasion upon which bachelor's degrees are conferred by the university. Since 1989, a separate graduation ceremony has been held for recipients of postgraduate degrees. Additional midyear undergraduate commencements were held at the end of the fall terms from 1988 to 1993^, and at several other points in the university's history.

From 1884 to 1994, Spring commencement was held on the CCSU campus in New Britain, but due to a lack of space and concerns about the weather, it was moved to the Hartford Civic Center, which was renamed the XL Center in 2007.

Prior to moving to its present location, the school, then known alternately as the "State Normal School", and the "New Britain Normal School," occupied what is now called the Camp School building in downtown New Britain.

The graduation ceremony for the first class (numbering five graduates) took place on October 1, 1851, in the old South Congregational Church. Commencements continued to be held off-campus until 1885. No ceremonies were held in 1868 or 1869, as the school's operations had been suspended by state officials.^, From about 1873 to 1885, two graduations were held each year: a "first class" in January and a "second class" in June. In 1884 the college moved into the new Camp building. From that time until 1925, an average of about 80 students (nearly all young women) received teaching diplomas each year at a graduation ceremony in the school's assembly hall on a weekday morning in late June.

From 1925 to 1935, commencement was held in the auditorium of the school's new building on Stanley Street. The first outdoor commencement ceremonies were held in 1936, in the college's amphitheater. The arrangement of an outdoor ceremony held indoors in case of rain continued until the 1990s. Over time the outdoor location included the college quadrangle and first of two athletics fields known as "Arute field." By the late 1940s, a building named "Memorial Hall" (later razed and unconnected to CCSU's present Memorial Hall) was used for commencement exercises moved indoors because of rain, such as the 1955 event. In 1959, the college, which had been renamed "Teachers College of Connecticut" in 1933, became "Central Connecticut State College".

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