The World Indigenous Nations University (WINU) has conferred an honorary Doctor of Education degree on longtime tribal college educator Tom Davis. The ceremony took place during Navajo Technical University’s (NTU’s) spring commencement in Crownpoint, New Mexico, with Dr. Elmer Guy, NTU’s president and WINU board member, officiating the degree conferral.

Established by the World Indigenous Nations Higher Education Consortium (WINHEC) during its 2012 meeting in Taiwan, WINU operates as a culturally rooted institution that seeks to advance Indigenous knowledge, research, and scholarship. Davis is just one of a handful of people internationally to receive an honorary doctorate from WINU.

Davis’s selection recognizes his long career in advancing Indigenous education, which began at the Menominee County Community School in Wisconsin, one of the early tribally controlled schools in the United States. He went on to assist Dr. Verna Fowler in building the College of Menominee Nation where he served as vice president of academic affairs.

Over the years, Davis has served the Tribal College Movement in a variety of capacities. He worked as president of Little Priest Tribal College, Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwa Community College, and Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College. At Bay Mills Community College, Davis helped develop one of the earliest virtual online degree programs in the United States. He rounded out his TCU career as provost of NTU, making WINU’s honorary doctorate conferral there all the more apt.

Besides his distinguished career in the Tribal College Movement, Davis was one of WINHEC’s founders. Along with TCU giants Lionel Bordeaux and Jim Shanley, he helped charter the consortium in 2002 on the Stoney Nakoda reserve in Alberta, Canada. Dr. Davis wrote about his experiences with WINHEC and the Tribal College Movement in his poetry collection and informal history, Meditation on Ceremonies of Beginnings: The Tribal College and World Indigenous Nations Higher Education Consortium Poems.