Five thousand Arizona State University students will receive their degrees during the school's commencement on Thursday.
There will be about 730 students graduating from the downtown Phoenix campus, 965 from the West campus, 520 from the Polytechnic campus, and about 3,000 from the Tempe main campus.
The commencement ceremony will begin at 10 a.m. at the Wells Fargo Arena. President Michael Crow will be the speaker.
"December is always a smaller ceremony than in May. There are about the same amount of students graduating this year as last year," said Sarah Auffret, assistant director for ASU media relations. Auffret said the university is expecting 8,000 students to graduate in May.
There will be smaller college and cultural convocation ceremonies held today through Saturday.
The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences will hand out the most diplomas during its convocation ceremony on Friday, Auffret said.
The school includes majors like psychology, communications, physics, and film and media studies.
"Political science is the most popular major in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences," Auffret said.
In addition to family and friends, there will be 220 eighth-graders from Phoenix Preparatory Academy and Magnet Traditional School in Phoenix attending the commencement ceremony.
The visit is part of Access ASU, a program to increase the number of Arizona high school students enrolling at the university.
The school's commencement ceremony will be broadcast live at http://live.asu.edu/.
