Carnegie Mellon University
September 15, 2014

Andrew Carnegie Society Scholars Class of 2015 Announced

Eight outstanding Dietrich College seniors have been selected as Andrew Carnegie Society (ACS) Scholars.

ACS Scholars are undergraduate seniors who embody high standards of academic excellence combined with multi-dimensional characteristics such as volunteerism, involvement in student organizations, participation in sports or the arts and leadership.

Shaquille Charles
Major: Psychology
Bio: Shaquille is a senior Psychology major, with a particular concentration in health psychology, and plans to go to medical school. He has ben very active in research with Psychology faculty member Vicki Helgeson, and is now pursuing a year-long research project of his own in the form of a Dietrich College senior honors thesis (topic: the impact of race on physician-patient relations and subsequent health [Shaquille happens to be African-American]). He has been very active in the Global Medical Brigades (for which he has served as Education Chair and Fundraising Chair), was a founding father and recruitment chair for the Phi Delta Theta fraternity, co-founder of the CMU wrestling club, and Carnival booth chair for the Alpha Kappa Psi professional business fraternity. Shaquille is from Ardsley, NY.

Elana Goldberg
Major: Creative Writing
Bio: Elana is a senior Creative Writing major, with an additional major in Professional Writing. Elana has been inducted into Sigma Tau Delta (the International English Honors Society) and has received top honors at the Creative Writing Department's annual Adamson Awards, winning first place in the screenwriting and creative non­ fiction categories as well as the Topol Award for outstanding junior fiction writer. Elana is also dedicated to developing herself professionally through extra-curricular activities on and off campus. On campus, Elana has exercised her writing skills online, in print, and on the silver screen. She has served on the editing team of CMU's Imprint literary magazine and written print and social media pieces for Carnegie Mellon Today, The Tartan, and Her Campus. She is also a member of the CMU film club where she has had supporting production roles and been selected to write, produce, and direct her own short film. Off campus she has had a number of impressive professional development opportunities. She has worked in advertising at Mullen Advertising and in television and radio at CBS, Philadelphia and WQED, Pittsburgh. She has also been professionally recognized for her creative writing with publications in the Allegheny Review of Poetry, North Central Review Poetry, and Imprint Fiction. Elana has also substantially devoted herself to community service and leadership, particularly over the last three years as a tutor for the Neighborhood Learning Alliance-a Pittsburgh non-profit dedicated to helping at risk students. Elana also does community service on campus through her sorority Delta, Delta, Delta. There she has taken on a number of leadership positions including Assistant New Member Educator, Greek Sing Philanthropy Event Organizer, and Social Chair. Elana is from Churchville, PA.

Lucy Havens
Major: Information Systems
Bio: Lucy is a senior Information Systems major, with minors in English, and French & Francophone Studies. She has become proficient in French and, during Spring Semester 2014, completed a semester abroad at the SKEMA Business School, in Sophia Antipolis, France. She will continue, as an IS senior project, a student project that she led while at SKEMA, acting as liaison and interpreter with the French speaking project sponsor. Lucy is also working on a challenging Senior Thesis project, continuing to build on a summer project through the Human Computer Interaction Institute called 'Knowledge Accelerator.' Lucy and her HCII mentor are preparing a paper for presentation at CHI, a very high visibility international ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) conference. To quote IS Program Director Randy Weinberg, "This senior honors project promises to be among the most interesting, intellectually rich projects any IS student has ever undertaken during my 16 years at CMU." During Fall Semester 2014, Lucy will be inducted into Alpha Iota Delta, the international honor society for the decision sciences and information systems. Lucy is applying for Fulbright and Marshall scholarships. Finally, Lucy is engaged deeply in the campus. She has a wide range of diverse interests and co-curricular activities (including, for example, four years' participation as a Varsity Soccer athlete, service as a member of the University Disciplinary Committee and Academic Review Board, and service as a charter member of the reawakened IS Student Advisory Council). Lucy comes from Seattle, Washington.

Chloe Hawker
Major: International Relations and Politics
Bio: Chloe is a senior International Relations and Politics major with a minor in Creative Writing. She has also completed advanced language training in Spanish and intermediate language study in Chinese. She has served as a Teaching Assistant in the Department of Social and Decision Sciences. Chloe In addition, she has written for the Center for International Relations and Politics (CIRP) Journal. Chloe is described by her major’s faculty director, Dr. Kiron Skinner, as “an outstanding young scholar and an engaged and committed student leader.” For example, Chloe has worked for the Career and Professional Development Center (CPDC) at Carnegie Mellon since the spring of 2012. For the 2014-15 academic year, Chloe has earned the position of Lead Career Peer Mentor, which is a role that will have her supervising and offering development sessions for the twelve Career Peer Mentors. Chloe also served a unique role in the Carnegie Mellon University Washington Semester Program during the spring 2014 semester. She was selected to serve as the resident assistant for the program where she planned social and cultural programming for her peers. Chloe also served as a liaison between the students and the faculty and administrators of the program. Chloe also excels in promoting professional development opportunities to her peers through her work in the Career and Professional Development Center and by modeling success. She has held a number of impressive internships in Washington, DC. She received a Friedman Fellowship in the summer of 2013 and interned in the office of Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO) for the first half of the summer and then in the office of Congressman Ed Perlmutter (D-CO) for the second half of the summer. During her spring 2014 semester in Washington, DC, Chloe interned with the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University, administered by the Department of Defense. Chloe comes from Littleton, CO.

Erin Kiekhaefer

Major: Global Studies
Bio: Erin is a senior Global Studies major, with an additional major in Hispanic Studies and a minor in Linguistics. She has also been, since freshman year, a student in the university's Science and Humanities Scholars program. Erin has excelled in academics as well as athletics (varsity cross country and track) while pursuing her passion for Latin America and linguistics via volunteering in Peru, study abroad in Mexico, and research at Carnegie Mellon. She has particularly excelled in coursework focused on Latin America history and politics. In a very different approach to Spanish culture, Erin has earned praise for her grasp of linguistics, studying more “technical” dimensions of language acquisition in coursework focused on phonetics and phonology, topics that she pursued while studying in Mexico. Erin has also been a standout athlete at Carnegie Mellon, competing on the varsity cross-country and track teams and selected this year as team captain. In addition to being an excellent performer, Erin’s coach reports that her peers benefit from her positive team attitude and work ethic: “Her day-in and day-out contributions to her team mates to help them raise their level of performance is what every coach hopes to see from their leaders.” Finally, Erin has volunteered her time and skills to young people in Pittsburgh and Peru. As a first-year student, she took the initiative to volunteer as a Spanish-language tutor at Taylor Allderdice High School. As a senior, she will return to the Pittsburgh Public Schools via the Modern Languages Department’s service-learning course “Tutoring for Community Outreach.” She single-handedly arranged to extend this role as a volunteer for an entire semester in a home for boys in Trujillo, Perú. As her faculty advisor notes, “ (I)t takes a very poised and resourceful young woman to seek out much less undertake such a commitment. Erin comes friom Palo Alto, CA.

Stanley Krasner

Major: Economics and Mathematical Sciences
Bio: Stanley is a senior Economics and Mathematical Sciences major, with minor in computational finance. His academic advisor describes him as “truly one of the best and brightest scholars that Carnegie Mellon has seen. . . . an academic visionary, a leader within his department and across campus, and a significant cornerstone in the Carnegie Mellon campus community. His academic record is remarkable. He is pursuing a challenging major and minor, and is known for pushing the intellectual boundaries of the areas he studies by thinking bigger and asking deeper questions. In his final year at Carnegie Mellon, for example, when many students choose to choose to take lighter course loads to focus on graduate school applications and job searches, Stanley is taking a graduate-level economics course and a graduate-level math course. He is also writing an honors thesis entitled "Tracking the Effect of Financial News through Complex Fourier Transforms." This is innovative research which brings mathematical tools to a rarely studied area of financial time series econometrics. Stanley is al so a member of the Quantitative Social Science Scholars Program. He is one of the program's most active participants, and he takes full advantage of all of the lectures, guest speakers, and research opportunities granted to him by the program. Stanley is also a valued member of the Undergraduate Economics Program and the Carnegie Mellon campus community outside of the classroom. He has served as a grader for four terms, and spent two semesters working as a research assistant for Professor Rebecca Lessem. He has been an asset to the Economics program by providing informal mentorship to younger students. He also serves as a representative on the Economics Student Advisory Committee. As part of this committee he brings new ideas for social events to engage his classmates and form a closer cohort group. Stanley also founded an organization called Students for Undergraduate Research in Economics. The objective of this organization is to better connect students with faculty outside of the classroom and to encourage the development connections based on similar interests. The organization presents tools and techniques that can be used for research in economics, and focuses on how students can engage in meaningful research experiences during their undergraduate tenure. Stanley has also held a leadership role in a number of other campus organizations. He is the treasurer for Apex Buggy, treasurer for the Undergraduate Math Club, and a planning committee member for the Dietrich College Under Construction event. He has also presented research at the Meeting of the Minds Undergraduate Research Symposium. In his advisor’s words: “(Stan) has immersed himself in the campus culture and has left impressions on faculty, staff, and students that will last far beyond his time at Carnegie Mellon.” Stanley comes from Brooklyn, NY.

Emma Livne
Major: Global Studies
Bio: Emma is a senior majoring in Global Studies, while also pursuing a pre-medical curriculum and with plans to attend medical school. She has excelled academically while taking on an astounding amount of responsibility in and beyond the Carnegie Mellon campus. During her years at Carnegie Mellon — interrupted by a life-threatening disease — Emma not only pursued her interests in health, medicine, and Global Studies, but she also emerged as a campus leader committed to community-building. Emma’s experiences both inside and outside of the classroom reflect remarkable diversity and rigor. She has completed courses in science, anthropology and history while preparing for a potential career in medicine. She also learned about many different parts of the world, including India, Latin America, and the Middle East. The number of non-academic pursuits is, as her faculty advisor puts it, “frankly dizzying.” They include service as a CMU residential assistant for a first-year women’s floor, leading a campus community service committee, Relay for Life Team Captain, campus host of a Red Cross Blood Drive, chair of food collection drives, preceptor at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center , service as President of the CMU chapter Project Sunshine (is a nonprofit organization that provides free educational, recreational, and social programs to children and families living with medical challenges), service in the CMU student government advisory cabinet, volunteering with Prevention Point Pittsburgh (a local needle exchange site), Alternative Spring Break volunteer (Dominican Republic Orphanage Outreach), and member of the CMU women’s club ultimate frisbee team. What pulls together her wide-ranging co-curricular activities are a passion to build community by reaching out to peers and many others including hospitalized children. Emma comes from White Plains, NY.

Colin Shaffer
Major: Ethics, History and Public Policy
Bio: Colin is a senior majoring in Ethics, History and Public Policy. Like all nominees for the ACS, Colin is an excellent student. He has balanced a very tough course load (EHPP plus a minor in business) with the demands of athletics and work. (Colin is captain of the CMU men's varsity soccer team.) To give just a sampling of the recognition that Colin has received, he was selected as the Student Representative to the university’s Athletic Director Search Committee and a is also on the Student-Athlete Advisory Council for NCAA collegiate athletes. He was selected as National Soccer Coaches Association of America Scholar All-Region 2013 and was a UAA Conference All-Academic pick in 2012 and 2013. He was the 2013-2014 CMU Intramural Athletics Employee of the Year. His academic success has been recognized through election to the presidency of Mortar Board, selection as the Carnegie Mellon Undergraduate Students Representative to Dietrich College Council, and admission to Phi Alpha Theta, the National History Honor Society. His passions for sports, law and public policy are guiding him in his selection of a senior honors thesis in which he will examine the right of collegiate athletes to be compensated—an extraordinarily hot topic at the moment with significant legal, political, and academic ramifications. He also gives a great deal back to the community. He has volunteered for the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, the Student-Athlete Advisory Council Field Day (K-4th grade students); the Tartan Olympics; an organization called “Soles4Souls” that helps provide shoes for underprivileged kids; and the Tartan Athlete Fellowship into the Community programs. Colin's plans beyond CMU include law school and a career in sports management. Colin comes from Huntington Beach, CA.