In addition to regular certified diplomas, Kansas University will give these commemorative diplomas featuring the names of all 17 KU chancellors to 2015-2016 graduates, in honor of KU’s 150th anniversary year.

This year’s Kansas University graduates will get not just one but two of those hallowed pieces of paper proving they completed their studies.

The first will be the usual sealed official diploma. The second will be a special sesquicentennial commemorative diploma — featuring not just the graduate’s name and degree but also signatures of all 17 KU chancellors, as a reminder of the many other students who passed through KU over the course of 150 years.

“It’s a nice piece of history,” said Brian McDow, senior associate university registrar. “It’s so unique and interesting to have the full depth of the university up until today represented on one document.”

Summer 2015, fall 2015 and spring 2016 graduates will get a commemorative diploma at no cost.

Past KU graduates will be able to buy one, printed with their name and degree earned.

The registrar’s office has a process in place to verify degrees before printing the special diplomas for alumni, McDow said. The cost is $50, and ordering information is available online at registrar.ku.edu.

The commemorative diploma’s oldest signature is that of R.W. Oliver, chancellor from 1865 to 1867, who oversaw KU when it had just one building and three faculty members, according to the KU chancellor website.

Things have come a long way since then. Bernadette Gray-Little now oversees a university with thousands of faculty and staff and tens of thousands of students and more than 100 buildings on the Lawrence campus alone.

Perhaps the biggest challenge to creating the special diplomas was hunting down signatures, McDow said.

Gray-Little’s, of course, wasn’t much of a hunt.

The older chancellors, though?

Librarians at KU’s Spencer Research Library helped dig through archived documents to find examples, McDow said. Some hi-resolution scans and image clean-up work by the KU marketing department helped get them print-ready.

“It’s quite the team effort,” McDow said.