The University of Wisconsin-Superior’s Indigenous Alumni Speakers Series will begin with Dennis White on Tuesday, September 10, at 3 p.m. in the William “Pope” Wright Student Center. This event is free and open to the community.

A 1969 graduate with a degree in mathematics, White teaches mathematics and Native American art at Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe University near Hayward, Wisconsin.

Also earning a master’s in 1983 from UW-Madison, White began his career in Indian Education as counselor for Indian students in a summer reading program in 1967. He has been a college instructor in American Indian Studies, a high school mathematics teacher and a school administrator at his tribal school on the Reservation where both his parents were born and raised. While most of White’s career has been in Indian Education as a teacher and administrator, he has also been an engineer in software development with a major U.S. corporation AT&T Bell Laboratories. White’s art earned him a selection as one of three Indigenous Artists of the Year by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in 2009.

In 2016, he was presented with an award from the Wisconsin Indian Education Association as The Indian Educator of the Year. In 2017, the UW-Superior Alumni Association presented White the Distinguished Alumni of the Year Award.

Highlighting the stories of Indigenous alumni of UW-Superior and honoring their accomplishments and perspectives, the Indigenous Alumni Speakers Series will continue October 7 with Moira Villiard; November 18 with Patricia Northrup; and December 3 with Jason Schlender. Events are sponsored by the UW-Superior Indigenous studies program, Indigenous Cultures Resource Center, Alumni and Friends Foundation and Social Inquiry Department.

The William “Pope” Wright Student Center is in Old Main, Room 232.