Students Win Awards for Service
May 19, 2010
With just weeks left before graduation, second-year Harris School students Chad Williams and Jenny Song are being honored for their commitment and service to the University community.
Announced in April, Chad Williams won the University of Chicago Campus Life and Leadership Award, which recognizes about a half-dozen undergraduate and graduate students each year who have significantly contributed to co-curricular activities at the School. Awardees are nominated by fellow students and then chosen by a committee of staff members from The Office of Campus and Student Life.
Williams, a 29-year-old Illinois native, held several jobs at TD Bank before earning a degree at the Harris School. He was cautious about joining too many student organizations at first, but says that lack of involvement was short lived. He soon became an article editor at the Chicago Policy Review, the School’s academic journal which publishes student work, and also helped recruit Harris School students to tutor children from grades 6 to 12 at the University of Chicago Charter School’s Woodlawn campus.
By his second year, Williams upped his involvement even more. Out in Public Policy—a group dedicated to the policy issues surrounding gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people—was in danger of dissolving and needed leadership. “It was important to me that that group remain,” Williams says. “It needed to be active and needed to be visible even if it was going to be a small group.”
Williams stepped into the role of chairman, and his work with the group was one factor in the decision to give him the student award. “The committee was impressed with the leadership roles he has taken in Harris School organizations like Out in Public Policy along with his expressed considered attitude toward his co-curricular experience as a professional student returning to school after a time working in the private sector,” says Arthur Lundberg, student activities resource coordinator, about the selection process.
Williams currently serves as managing editor of the Chicago Policy Review, and plans to work as an analyst at the U.S. Government Accountability Office after graduation.
Meanwhile, fellow award-winner Jenny Song is being honored by the Greater Chicago Chapter of the American Society of Public Administration, which chooses an outstanding graduate student at each public administration program in the Chicago metropolitan area.
The 24-year-old Canadian came to graduate school after working as a reporter for The Associated Press in Chicago. Before enrolling, Song had been filling in for a state education reporter on maternity leave—an assignment that wet her appetite for education issues. “I came to graduate school to get a deeper understanding of education policy,” she says.
She also took an interest in the school’s student organizations, immediately joining Minorities in Public Policy Studies (MIPPS), which aims to raise awareness of issues that pertain to minority students and help increase the number of minorities at the Harris School.
Song is currently president of MIPPS and co-chair of IBH Consulting, another student organization that aims to support Harris School students interested in careers in management consulting. She also serves on the Women in Public Policy Advocacy and Community Outreach Committee. She will work as a Fellow with the Education Pioneers program this summer before joining the staff of Bain & Company, a management consulting firm.
By Lauren Shepherd
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