Spring graduation celebration
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Congratulations to Faculty of Education students who received degrees and diplomas at the Spring Graduation ceremony on October 6.
Some 341 students from the faculty received their qualifications at a ceremony at the Aotea Centre. The degrees and diplomas were personally conferred by Chancellor Roger France.
A record number of doctorates were awarded by the University at this year’s Spring Graduation. Among them was Dr Peter Huggard, who received his doctorate in education. Dr Huggard appeared in the New Zealand Herald on the day of graduation with his daughter Katharine, who also received a doctorate in clinical psychology. The Huggard’s story is unusual because Katharine is also getting married on Saturday to fiancé Duncan Brown.
"What's confusing is that I'll be having two name changes in a week, first to Dr Katharine Huggard and then to Dr Katharine Brown," Katharine told the Herald.
Dr Huggard is also a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences and previously completed a Master of Education in Counselling at the faculty. His doctorate investigated compassion fatigue in hospital-based doctors. Compassion fatigue is a process whereby anyone in a helping and caring role can experience emotional and psychological distress as a consequence of witnessing the distress of others. Supervised by Associate Professor Robyn Dixon and Professor Linda Cameron, he examined the processes of resilience, the use of empathy, personal spirituality, and emotionality within a cohort of 250 hospital-based doctors.
“(Compassion fatigue) is regarded as a normal consequence of working in certain professions, yet a consequence that has not been widely acknowledged, nor has received the attention needed to enable staff to effectively manage this experience,” he says.
In total 2515 students from The University of Auckland received 2750 qualifications at four ceremonies at the Spring Graduation. It is the second graduation for 2009; in early May there were 11 ceremonies over three days.
