Carnegie Mellon Engineering Students Honored by Global Communicators for Community Service Event

May 24, 2010

Contact: Chriss Swaney
Carnegie Mellon University
412.268.5776

PITTSBURGH-Carnegie Mellon University's Cricket Club beat out more than 3,000 entries to win a 2010 Gold Hermes Award for community service in the nonprofit category for hosting a memorial cricket game to honor fallen Pittsburgh Police officers.

           
The Hermes awards are presented on behalf of the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals, an organization consisting of several thousand marketing, communication, advertising, public relations, media production and freelance professionals, who oversee the annual competition.

           
"It was an ambitious project, but we set up the memorial game for such a worthy cause," said Sagar Shah, a senior in electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon and Cricket Club captain.

           
The Cricket Club hosted the 2010 Cricket Credits benefit cricket game April 3 in memory of fallen Pittsburgh Police Officers Eric G. Kelly, Stephen J. Mayhle and Paul J. Sciullo, who were killed responding to a domestic call in the city's Stanton Heights neighborhood last spring.

           
Pittsburgh Police Chief Nathan E. Harper joined members of the Carnegie Mellon University Police and 14-members of the honor cricket team to pay tribute to the fallen officers with memorial awards, bagpipers, an abbreviated cricket game and the release of doves signifying peace. 

           
"This event was both a great tribute and a thoughtful reminder of the many sacrifices police make daily to keep the community safe," said Carnegie Mellon Police Chief Thomas A. Ogden. "I'm so proud that our students took time from their busy studies to honor these brave men."  

           
"This was such a heartfelt special event, and I'm continually amazed at our students' creativity, initiative and empathy when it comes to getting involved with community outreach," said Kurt Larsen, assistant dean of undergraduate studies at Carnegie Mellon's College of Engineering. "Our students have to balance a difficult academic schedule, but they still make time to be involved with special community outreach programs like the memorial cricket game." 

           
The Carnegie Mellon Cricket Club honor team included Abeer Agrawal, Ajay Nair, Shahroz Aziz, Nakul Bagla, Mudit Bharghav, Hemant Bothra, Atishe Chordia, Mayank Dugar, Alastair Firth, Sahil Jolly, Aayush Kumar, Sagar Shah, Anirudh Sood and Raghav Todi.

           
Other members of the winning team included the College of Engineering's Media Relations Office and its Office of Undergraduate Studies, the University Police and the university's Communications Design team.

           
For additional information about the award, please see http://hermesawards.com/winner_info.php.