Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Online Graduation & Awards Ceremonies • 2021

Watch the Acknowledgement of Native Lands.

Watch the Graduation Opening video.

Watch the Awards Ceremony Opening video.

Play the Public Health Trivia game.

Watch the Ceremony webcast.

The global pandemic’s impacts on Harvard’s School of Public Health continued throughout the 2020–2021 academic year, with an essentially empty campus and nearly all classes online. We were asked to created two webcast year-end events: an Awards ceremony, and a more formal Graduation ceremony.

For the former, we designed a remote-captured version of the school’s traditional in-person ceremony opening: a recitation by current students of the Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is inscribed on the outer walls of the main campus building. The video is spoken and shown in 11 languages, reflecting the diverse global student body that the Harvard Chan School draws to Boston. This event was webcast on May 26, 2021.

For the Graduation ceremony streamed the following day, we did a socially-distanced video recording of the brass ensemble who have played at in-person Graduation events for many years, creating Prelude and Recessional video containers spiced with congratulatory messages from luminaries such as Dr. Anthony Fauci and former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick. To enliven the online experience for attendees, we created an opt-in interactive Public Health Trivia game accessible before and after the ceremony webcast. And we produced as short Acknowledgement of Native Lands video that played before the ceremony began. An Opening video then captured the year’s many challenges and the Harvard Chan School’s remarkable responses to them in dense and elegant motion graphics combined with live action video comments.

Dean Michelle Williams post event comments: “Thank you and your team for your hard work, dedication, and creativity in ensuring this year’s Harvard Chan Graduation was a success. Your efforts and…the terrific recording reflected both the accomplishments of our impressive graduates and our excitement to support their future endeavors. On behalf of our graduates and our entire community, thank you once again for your wonderful work! Your expertise was invaluable and we couldn’t be more pleased with the result.”