UND Summer Commencement set for Aug. 7
The University of North Dakota will host its summer commencement ceremony at 2 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 7, at the Chester Fritz Performing Arts Center.
UND President Andrew Armacost will preside over the ceremony conferring professional, graduate and undergraduate degrees to as many as 584 eligible graduates.
Dan Lewerenz, associate professor of Law at the UND School of Law, will speak to this summer’s graduates. Lewerenz has taught at UND since 2022 following a career in journalism and law, most recently serving as a staff attorney for the Native American Rights Fund in Washington, D.C.
Parking is free for graduates, guests, faculty and staff in the lot south of the Chester Fritz Performing Arts Center. Doors to the seating area open one hour before the ceremony.
The ceremonies will be livestreamed at UND.edu and UND’s Facebook page.
About Dan Lewerenz, associate professor of Law
Dan Lewerenz is an associate professor of Law at the University of North Dakota School of Law. He is a member of the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska and is the chief judge of his tribe’s appellate court.
Lewerenz joined UND from the Native American Rights Fund, where he was a staff attorney in the Washington, D.C., office. At NARF, Lewerenz was one of two attorneys who staffed the Tribal Supreme Court Project and drafted amicus briefs in both state and federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court and U.S. Courts of Appeal for the First, Fifth and Eighth Circuits. His litigation docket at NARF included treaty rights, voting rights and the Indian Child Welfare Act, among other issues.
He previously served as an attorney-advisor at the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Office of the Solicitor in the Division of Indian Affairs. In his two-and-a-half years at the Department of the Interior, Lewerenz was awarded both the Solicitor’s Excellence Award, for outstanding legal work, and the Solicitor’s Coin, for advancing goals of the Solicitor’s Office.
Prior to earning his J.D. From the University of Wisconsin Law School, Lewerenz spent 10 years as a reporter and editor for The Associated Press in Kansas City, Mo.; Helena, Mont.; Columbia, S.C.; State College, Pa.; and Cheyenne, Wyo.
Through his career in journalism, Lewerenz was elected twice to the board of directors of the Indigenous Journalists Association (at that time, the Native American Journalists Association), which he served as president and vice president.
