The live stream of commencement will continue for its third semester, allowing families and friends who are unable to attend to see their students walk across the stage to receive their diploma.

University Communications and University Relations who partnered with KFOX-TV in 2012 after KFOX approached them with the idea of streaming the commencement ceremonies on their network for free.

“The (audience) numbers after each one have shown a high interest and we have viewers all over the world,” said Frank Montes de Oca, assistant director of University Relations.

In a statement released by University Communications, during the December 2012 commencement there were about 793 views. During the May 2013 commencement, there were about 2,912 views. Of those views, families were tuning in from Mexico, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Germany, India, Libya, Ireland, Japan, Samoa, Australia, Spain and Bahrain, to name a few.

“We have met with them (KFOX) prior and after the commencements to discuss each one,” Montes de Oca said. “Since we use their system, they leave the commencement running and don’t show the evening news so it’s a really nice thing that they’re doing.”

University Communications will also upload the commencement videos after the ceremonies in case anyone was unable to watch it live or if they wish to download the video.

For more information about commencement, visit ia.utep.edu.

Lorain Watters may be reached at [email protected].