The University of the Philippines Open University (UPOU) will be holding its 22nd Commencement Exercises this September, the last commencement exercise for all the Constituent Units (CU) of the University of the Philippines (UP) System this year. Unlike other CUs which hold their commencement exercises in June, UPOU scheduled its 2018 commencement exercises on 29 September 2018 to accommodate all students who complete their degrees for academic year 2017-2018 from 1st and 2nd Semester, and Midyear term to 1st, 2nd and 3rd Trimester. The ceremony will be held at the UPOU Headquarters in Los Baños, Laguna.
Three hundred forty-eight (348) students will be conferred their degrees this year, fifty of which are undergraduate students, and 298 are graduate students. Of the graduate students, twenty-five completed graduate certificate degrees, 128 completed graduate diploma degrees, 129 completed Master's degrees and 16 students completed their doctorate degrees.
Commission on Higher Education (CHED) Commissioner and Officer-in-Charge (OIC), Dr. J. Prospero E. de Vera III, will be this year's commencement speaker. Comm. De Vera is a professor at the National College of Public Administration & Governance (NCPAG) at UP Diliman. He is known for his expertise in social development, public policy and political management which earned him the former directorship for the NCPAG Center for Leadership, Citizenship and Democracy (CLCD) and Center for Policy and Executive Development (CPED).
The theme of this year's Commencement Exercises is "Leading in ODeL towards Education 4.0." (ACLlamas)
