Fall 2026 Commencement will be held on Friday, Dec. 11 at Stegeman Coliseum at the following times:
- Undergraduate: 10 a.m. (faculty arrival time at 9 a.m.)
- Doctoral/master’s/specialist: 2:30 p.m. (hooding faculty arrival at 12:45 p.m.; processional faculty arrival at 1:30 p.m.)
We have again made special arrangements to help facilitate faculty participation in the fall ceremonies, including offering complimentary regalia rental from the UGA Bookstore and parking at the Carlton Street Deck next to Stegeman Coliseum.
Graduate ceremony
Please note that if you are a major professor for a doctoral student, not only is it an honor, but it is also expected that you attend and participate in the hooding of your student. If you cannot attend for some unavoidable reason, please identify a substitute to attend and hood your student at the ceremony.
Faculty participating in the hooding activity will sit with their doctoral students in the Coliseum and be part of the academic procession. You will line up with your student(s) in the Basketball Practice Gym, which is on the second floor of the Coliseum Training Facility. Please make plans to meet in the Coliseum with your student no later than 12:45 p.m. Faculty not participating in the hooding activity will assemble in the conference room on the lower level of Stegeman Coliseum, and we ask that they also arrive around 1 p.m. These faculty members will march in immediately preceding the platform party.
Regalia rental
Faculty regalia rental forms are due to the UGA Bookstore by Tuesday, Oct. 20. Regalia costs are only covered for faculty participating in the institutional ceremonies on Friday, Dec. 11. Regalia rentals requested after that date are not guaranteed and may incur a personal rush fee of $20 or more. Once faculty register to participate in one or both of the ceremonies, they will receive a confirmation email with a link to the regalia form. No faculty regalia rentals will be accepted after Tuesday, Oct. 20.
Parking
Parking is limited and available on a first-come, first-served basis. Use the registration link to request a parking pass for each ceremony you plan to attend.
Clear bag policy
The clear bag policy for UGA athletic events is in effect for commencement. Please follow these guidelines.
Faculty who plan to attend any of the commencement ceremonies should use this form to register. For additional information, please refer to the Commencement website.
All spring 2026 and summer 2026 instructors were invited to submit feedback on the University’s course evaluation system. This is a polite reminder to share your feedback by Tuesday, Sept. 15.
Responses to this anonymous survey will be compiled and reported to the Office of the Vice President for Instruction in aggregate. Please consider sharing your perspectives on this new process by completing the survey.
The University updated its approved letterhead in 2025. Please review your unit’s letterhead to ensure you are using the most current version. The most significant update is to the footer information.
Additional details and approved templates are available on the University of Georgia Brand Style Guide webpage.
- Date: Friday, Oct. 2 (register today)
- Arrival time: 5-5:45 p.m.
- Check-in location: Double Barrel Cannon (intersection of College Avenue and Hancock Avenue)
- Attire: UGA spirit (jerseys, T-shirts, etc.) or College T-shirt and walking shoes
All Mary Frances Early College of Education students, faculty, and staff are invited to join the College’s Student Ambassadors in the upcoming Homecoming Parade. Signs and pom-poms will be provided. We will walk with alumnus Reign Streiter and his amazing spirit car! You don’t want to miss out. Sign up for yourself or for a group by Monday, Sept. 28.
The Homecoming Parade runs through downtown Athens and features floats, spirit cars, and walking participants with banners. It showcases student organizations, alumni, faculty and staff, and community members who all share a love of Athens and the University of Georgia.
Participants must arrive at the parade location between 5-5:45 p.m. A message will be sent the day of with our exact location in the parade line-up. Please contact Kayla McKinney, coordinator of student engagement, for more information.
Join the Institute for Disaster Management, in partnership with the UGA Office of Emergency Preparedness, for a month full of preparedness-themed events.
- Friday, Sept. 11: Disaster movie screening: 9/11
- Tuesday, Sept. 15: Disaster trivia
- Monday, Sept. 21: Civilian Response to Active Shooter Events (CRASE) training
- Wednesday, Sept. 30: National Preparedness Day fair
- Date: Wednesday, Sept. 23
- Time: 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m.
- Location: Special Collections Library Room 285
The UGA Institute for Women’s and Gender Studies (WGS) is kicking off our year-long 50th anniversary celebration with our annual Fall Faculty Reception, where faculty from across the University are invited to join us for conversation, laughter, yummy food, and catching up as we begin a new academic term.
This year, we will be featuring a brief panel discussion between WGS director Patricia Richards and some of the folks who were around for the inception of the women’s studies program at UGA. We’ll also share all the amazing things we have planned for our anniversary year.
Please RSVP to Elise.Robinson@uga.edu by Monday, Sept. 14.
- Date: Friday, Sept. 25
- Time: Noon-1 p.m.
- Location: Zoom (register today)
- Presenter: Mira Kallio-Tavin, professor, University of Georgia Lamar Dodd School of Art
Join the UGA qualitative research program for the first UGA QUAL Lab Speaker Series of the semester, “Artistic Inquiry and Methodological Surprise: Experimenting with What Research Can Do,” presented by Mira Kallio-Tavin.
Methodological experimentation has a long history in qualitative and postqualitative inquiry, including ongoing efforts to challenge and rethink predetermined methods. This talk enters these ongoing conversations through artistic inquiry. Drawing from recent collaborative research projects and emerging work on immanent artistic inquiry, Kallio-Tavin explores what artistic practices might contribute to methodological experimentation when thinking-making-doing or artistic production is understood not only as a research method, but as a mode of sensing, relating, and inquiring.
Through examples of collective artistic experimentation, she considers how inquiry can take shape through relations among concepts, theory, materials, bodies, affects, environments, technologies, and more-than-human lives. Artistic practices can create conditions for staying with uncertainty and methodological surprise, allowing inquiry to change direction through what emerges in the inquiry rather than only through what was anticipated in its design. Her collaborative work with methodological composting, for example, has explored how concepts and practices can be recycled, reconfigured, layered, and transformed through collective thinking-making-doing. In this talk, she considers artistic inquiry as a space for methodological curiosity and experimentation.
Kallio-Tavin returns to her three most recent research projects and publications, some of which are still emerging. She invites participants to think with questions about what methods can do, where they might become insufficient, and what artistic practices make possible for living with the uncertainty, relationality, and emergence of inquiry.
Building a Thought Full World: Creativity + Love of Humanity
- Date: Monday, Oct. 26
- Time: 4-6 p.m.
- Location: UGA Chapel
The Torrance Center for Creativity will be hosting Po-Shen Loh for the 2026 Torrance Lecture. Loh will share his experience innovating an ecosystem which teaches both creativity and love for humanity, powered by combining the faraway worlds of professional actors, mathematicians, and Internet live-streaming. He will also discuss the future of AI and strategies for thriving.
Please register for this free event.
Chiesa gives keynote at TESOL 2026 conference
David Chiesa, a clinical associate professor in the Department of Language and Literacy Education, was invited by the TESOL International Association to serve as a keynote speaker at TESOL 2026: English for the Future in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. Organized by the U.S. Embassy in Ashgabat in collaboration with the Ministry of Education of Turkmenistan, the conference brought together English language educators for professional learning focused on the future of English language teaching.
As part of this international engagement, Chiesa delivered a keynote address exploring the use of artificial intelligence in assessing spoken language development and led four additional professional development sessions for educators. He also mentored Turkmen educators as they developed and delivered their own professional development sessions, supporting local capacity building and the continued growth of English language education in Turkmenistan.
The experience reflected a broader commitment to international educational collaboration, educator development, and the responsible integration of emerging technologies into English language teaching and assessment.
Lindstrom to serve on new statewide literacy task force
This week, Governor Brian P. Kemp, Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones, and House Speaker Jon Burns announced their appointees to the newly established Georgia Literacy Task Force, a standing body created under House Bill 1193, the Georgia Early Literacy Act, to strengthen kindergarten through third grade reading instruction statewide.
The Literacy Task Force will be chaired by the state literacy director and will work to continue implementing literacy reforms, strengthen resources for educators, and ensure every child has a strong foundation for learning from their earliest years in the classroom. The Governor’s Office of Education and Workforce Strategy (GOEWS) will convene the task force in the coming weeks to begin their work.
Task force members
- Gary Bingham, director, The Urban Child Study Center, Georgia State University College of Education and Human Development
- Dayle Burns, retired elementary educator and administrator
- Amy Denty, director of literacy, Georgia Department of Education
- Jennifer Lindstrom, associate professor, Department of Communication Sciences and Special Education, University of Georgia Mary Frances Early College of Education
- Amy Lingo, dean, Georgia Southern University College of Education
- Andri Pilgrim, retired educator and executive committee member, Georgia Council on Literacy
- Kelly McKay, Georgia Council on Literacy member; assistant superintendent, Rabun County Schools
- Lesley S. Taylor, regional literacy coach, First District RESA
- Christina Wagoner, principal, West Side Elementary School, Cobb County
- Charley Walper, elementary educator, Bartow County School System
- Stephanie Westhafer, K‑5 STEAM educator and agricultural literacy advocate
About the task force work
GOEWS executive director Fran Dundore states, “Literacy is the foundation every other opportunity is built on, and this task force brings together exactly the right voices to deliver on it.”
The Literacy Task Force will support the core commitments of the state literacy plan: Vision 2030 by laying the foundations to ensure every child is a reader, every educator is prepared, and every community is supported. The task force is responsible for providing recommendations to the State Board of Education, the Governor’s Office of Education and Workforce Strategy, the Georgia Literacy Coordinating Committee, and the state literacy director on the following:
- A state-wide, comprehensive curriculum-based professional learning program in structured literacy, aligned to the science of reading, for K-3 teachers and literacy coaches
- A list of 2-5 valid, reliable universal reading screening, formative, and diagnostic assessments for selection and use by local school systems and public schools
- A list of 2-5 systematically designed high-quality instructional materials aligned to the science of reading for grades K-3