UM Confers Two Honorary Doctorates

Denise Juneau, Dr. Bill Reynolds recognized at Spring Commencement

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Categories: Alumni , Campus , Academic

Denise Juneau waves to the crowd at UM Commencement
Denise Juneau waves to the crowd at UM Commencement

UM awarded two Doctorates of Humane Letters during its May 4 Commencement exercises. The degrees were awarded to Denise Juneau, the Montana superintendent of public instruction from 2009 to 2017, and Dr. William “Bill” Reynolds, a beloved doctor who served the Missoula area for four decades.

Juneau graduated with a Juris Doctor degree from the UM law school in 2004 and has gone on to have a significant and positive influence both in Montana and nationally. She served as Montana’s first female Native American elected to a statewide executive office as Montana superintendent of public instruction. Raised on Montana’s Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Browning, Juneau is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes (Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara) in North Dakota.

A Havre native, Reynolds, earned a pre-med undergraduate degree from UM in 1952.

Reynolds attended medical school at Washington University in St. Louis, where he met and married Joanne “Jo” Flanagan, a registered nurse working at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. He earned his M.D. in 1956 before returning to Missoula with his family in 1963.

At UM, Bill has served on the UM Foundation board of directors, the Davidson Honors College advisory board and the College of Humanities and Sciences advisory board. In 2015, the annual award for teaching across the curriculum by the humanities college was renamed the William Reynolds Teaching Award in his honor.

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