Online Graduation Ceremony for CITS Masters
As Nadezhda Emelianova, Dean of the Faculty of Foreign Languages of ASU, aptly noted in her video congratulations to the MA students of the Caspian Higher School of Interpreting and Translation, this year’s graduates can be called the “crowned” ones without any exaggeration – the pandemic turned out to be not an easy test to take the master’s degree in interpreting and translation. Nevertheless, 16 CITS graduates coped with all the difficulties and celebrated June 14 in robes with their cherished master’s degree diplomas in linguistics.
However, this year the graduation ceremony was held online via the Zoom platform. Due to the difficult epidemiological situation, the university and school management decided to hold the entire event in an online mode. Unfortunately, this deprived us of the opportunity to organize a traditional beautiful ceremony for our graduates with music, photos and communication with honorable guests in our Center of Conference Interpreting. On the other hand, it gave us the opportunity to gather our partners, university management, school trainers and, of course, our graduates in online space, who even in their rooms, sitting in robes and hats, could feel like real masters.
There were greetings from Konstantin Markelov, Rector of the Astrakhan State University, Ulyana Savelyeva, Head of the Caspian Higher School of Interpreting and Translation, Ilya Toropitsyn, Acting Head of the International Relations Agency of the Astrakhan region, Alexey Fedorov, Deputy Director of the Department of linguistic Support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia, Nadezhda Emelianova, Dean of the Faculty of Foreign Languages of ASU, and Olga Egorova, Founder of our School.
Our foreign partners Geoffrey Westgate, Head of the Support Section of PCT Translation Division of the World Intellectual Property Organization, Patricia Mortelmans and Rita Nikolajeva, representatives of the Directorate-General for Interpretation of the European Commission, also said some greeting words to our graduates. In addition, the ceremony was attended by Mr. Mokhtari Behrouz, Consul-General of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Astrakhan.
It was the online format that brought together the participants from different parts of the world, who gladly said farewell words to our graduates and once again stressed the importance and fruitful cooperation of their organizations with CITS and ASU.
At the end of the ceremony Ulyana Savelyeva, Head of CITS, presented a pleasant surprise to the participants by reciting Andrei Voznesensky’s poem “Do You Remember Me?” as a message to our graduates: the school and the university will never forget them and will always be glad to see them within their walls again.
