Student earns major award

For the first time, a UM student was awarded a prestigious Jack Kent Cooke Graduate Scholarship. The award, worth up to $50,000 per year, is intended to help young people of exceptional promise reach their full potential through education.

The award went to Dawson Dunning, a 2005 UM graduate in wildlife biology and a Davidson Honors College scholar.

Dunning grew up on a cattle ranch outside of Otter and attended high school in Broadus. He intends to use the scholarship for a master’s degree in science and natural history filmmaking at Montana State University in Bozeman.

In his application, Dunning said he wants “to explore a career as a conservation biologist using science and natural history filmmaking to promote our planet’s most important conservation messages.”

At UM he took advantage of two study-abroad programs: a Davidson Honors College program in the Galapagos Islands and a biological sciences program in Peru. He also won the President’s Recognition Award for being the outstanding senior in wildlife biology, the Watkins Scholarship for research at UM and two national scholarships: the Udall for students committed to careers related to the environment and the Goldwater for science research.

Dunning has volunteered with the UM Advocates and Missoula’s Wildlife Film Festival. He also worked with the U.S. Forest Service as a stream fish surveyor.