Location and Seating

Ceremonies are held in the gymnasium in the Carver Academic Building on the WWU Bellingham campus.

Diverse crowd watches the ceremony from the stands.
View from behind graduates in their regalia with crowd blurred in the background.
Crowd cheers as graduates participate in the ceremony.

This is a joyous time for all graduates to celebrate their many accomplishments with friends and family, and we do our very best to accommodate as many guests as we can. Graduates will be allotted up to 5 complimentary ceremony tickets, with the option to apply for additional guest tickets when they confirm their commencement reservation (May 16 deadline). The requests will be placed on a waitlist and distributed on June 4, 2025.

Guest tickets (including accessibility accommodations) are general admission and seats will be filled on a first come-first seated basis.

*Tickets are not transferrable among ceremonies.*

Doors open one hour prior to each ceremony, and guests should be seated ten minutes prior to the ceremony start time because entrances close while the graduates process into Carver. Doors reopen when the procession is complete. We ask that families refrain from saving large numbers of seats in Carver. We need your help to ensure that all graduates and their loved ones have a good experience.

*Commencement will be livestreamed for friends and family who cannot attend in Carver.  Please consider whether or not any of your guests might be more comfortable viewing the livestream from the overflow seating in SMATE lecture halls (next to Carver Gym) or from off-campus and joining you for celebration after the ceremony. Guests viewing via livestream in SMATE do not need to be included in the guest count.*