First graduation ceremonies

June 2006

On June 6, 470 members of UBC Okanagan’s very first graduating class crossed the stage to receive their degrees in two ceremonies. Honorary degrees were conferred upon Dr. William Bowering, a former Okanagan University College president who expanded post-secondary education in the Okanagan, and upon Jeannette C. Armstrong, then-director of the Okanagan Nation’s En’owkin Centre in Penticton, whose 1985 work Slash is considered the first novel by an Indigenous woman in Canada.