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Carnegie Mellon Honors Chad Ellis '03

Chad Ellis, a 2003 Washington and Lee graduate and currently a Ph.D. candidate in chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University, has been named the recipient of CMU’s  Graduate Student Service Award, which recognizes “service to his fellow students at Carnegie Mellon, and to his colleagues around Pittsburgh and the nation.”

Chad, a chemistry major at W&L, served as 2009 Vice President of External Affairs for CMU’s Graduate Student Assembly.

An announcement of Chad’s award on the CMU news blog cited the work he did in arguing on behalf of international graduate student who face visa problems — an argument that he made to the U.S. Congress, where he met with legislators on the issue.

Chad was also involved in the fight to keep the city of Pittsburgh from taxing the tuition of all students at city universities, including Carnegie Mellon.

Rea Freeland, associate dean of the Mellon College of Science and associate head of the chemistry department, said of Chad: “In my 17 years of working with graduate students in many departments at Carnegie Mellon, including several past student leaders, I have never met anyone with such breadth of commitment to the Carnegie Mellon community in particular and to serving the broader society as a whole.”

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