Through the Student Involvement and Leadership, Weber State University graduating students are given the opportunity to honor those who have played influential roles in their academic lives.

The Putting Student Through ceremony is scheduled to take place at 4 p.m. in the Shepherd Union building Ballroom A on April 30. As the graduates gear-up to start a new journey into their post graduate lives they remember those who helped them complete their degree.

“Putting Student Through has been a WSU tradition for more than forty years, since graduates would often request to honor individuals that have influenced their tertiary education completion,” committee chair of Putting Student Through Jackie Edwards said.

According to the Student Involvement and Leadership’s (SIL) website, Putting Student Through (PST) was an initiative designed to give graduates of WSU a medium to acknowledge and express their gratitude to those who have contributed towards their learning experience in some way or another and led to the successful completion of their degree.

Students who have applied for graduation of all degree types were encouraged though multiple advertisements positioned throughout WSU’s campus to participate, and were given until April 13 to complete and submit a form available on the SIL website to nominate individuals they wanted to honor in the ceremony.

Then the nominees were contacted by the SIL via letters informing them that they were invited to be honored at a ceremony, along with a brief description of the purpose for which they were being recognized.

Graduates interested in addressing the audience at this event were given until April 3 to prepare a personalized, 3-minutes-or-less typed or handwritten speech to be submitted to either online or to the SIL office.

Those persons deemed suitable to address the crowd at the event were selected by the PST committee through an audition process based on their content produced, creativity and ability to complete their speech within a stipulated time frame.

The nominated persons to be honored at this PST ceremony range from student’s relatives, spouses, friends, mentors, advisers, employers, faculty members and even service animals.

At the awards ceremony President Chuck Wight is expected to present the honorees with a PST degree and diploma signed by him. The Dean of Students Jeffrey Hurst will also present the honorees with a pin.

For nominees who are unable to be in attendance, graduates who nominated them can collect the awards starting April 27 during business hours in the SIL office and present their honorees with the awards themselves.

Senior public relations and advertising student Kylinn Edwards, who is expected to graduate this semester, said she wasn’t aware of PST until recently.

“I think this PST is a great initiative for students to acknowledge the people who helped them achieve their degree, because I had many people that assisted me in attaining mine,” Edwards said.

If she had known about the ceremony before the nomination cycle ended, she said she would have nominated professor Sheree Josephson for her help in academic advising.

“I would have also nominated a staff member of the Registrar’s Office who’s in charge of suspensions, as she has encouraged me not to give up when I wanted to drop out of school 2 years ago,” Edwards said. “They both helped me to not give up and stick through school towards graduation.”