may 2024 Ceremony
Friday, May 10 at 10:00 a.m.
State Farm Center
Find more information about the ceremony, including tickets, on the May 2024 Doctoral Hooding Ceremony event details page.
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Ritual and Tradition of Academic Dress
The history of academic dress begins around the twelfth century when the earliest universities were forming in Europe. At that time, the dress of a scholar—whether student or teacher—was that of a cleric. Typically, a medieval scholar would have taken ecclesiastical vows and would have been tonsured. The long gowns were worn primarily for warmth and hoods would have covered the heads of the scholars who spent many hours in unheated monasteries where ancient texts were maintained.
Subsequently, the material of the gown and lining, and the shape of the hood, represented the economic, social, and academic status of the wearer. The wearing of distinctive regalia for universities emerged in England in the second half of the fourteenth century.
In the United States, the tradition of academic dress dates to the 1880s, when different institutions established their own academic dress codes. Black is the traditional color for gowns, although at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, academic dress has been designed specifically for the Institution—blue gowns with orange accents and blue mortarboards.
Doctoral Regalia
Today the doctoral gown is faced down the front with velvet and has bell-shaped sleeves with three bars of velvet across each sleeve, differentiating it from the bachelor’s and master’s gowns. The facing and bars may be black or blue, as is the case at Illinois, or may be the color of the subject to which the degree pertains. Doctoral gowns may be worn open or closed.
Another distinction of the doctoral gown is its longer hood, which measures 4 feet. Hoods are lined with the official color or colors of the college or university conferring the degree. At Illinois, the lining is orange and blue.
The five-inch, colored, velvet border of the hood identifies different doctoral degrees as follows:
- Dark Blue – Doctor of Philosophy / PhD
- Light Blue – Doctor of Education / EdD
- Pink – Doctor of Musical Arts / DMA
- Purple – Doctor of the Science of Law / JSD
- Medium Blue – Doctor of Audiology / DAud