Ana Montelongo is the 2015 Michael J. Angarola Scholar
IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law student Ana Montelongo '16 has been named the 2015 Michael J. Angarola Scholar. The scholarship was established by the family, friends and colleagues of Michael J. Angarola, a 1972 IIT Chicago-Kent graduate. At the time of his death in 1987, Angarola served as first assistant Cook County State's Attorney and as an adjunct professor at IIT Chicago-Kent.
The Michael J. Angarola scholarship is awarded annually to an IIT Chicago-Kent student based on outstanding performance in the law school's award-winning Trial Advocacy Program. Recipients are selected by IIT Chicago-Kent trial advocacy faculty.
"Mike was an outstanding trial lawyer. He represented the best of what it means to be a trial lawyer. He was a career prosecutor who represented the victims of crime with professionalism, integrity and compassion. Ana is the type of young advocate that Mike would be proud to have receive this scholarship," said Judge David A. Erickson, director of IIT Chicago-Kent's Trial Advocacy Program and director of the Program in Criminal Litigation.
At IIT Chicago-Kent, Ana Montelongo is a member of the trial advocacy team that finished as national finalists in the 2014 National Pretrial Competition. Montelongo, who plans a career as a criminal defense attorney, has completed internships with the Federal Defender Program and in IIT Chicago-Kent's criminal defense clinic. She has served as a judicial extern for the Honorable Charles P. Kocoras in the Northern District of Illinois.
Montelongo is a member of Women in Law, and she has served as secretary of the Federal Bar Association law student division and as 2L representative of the Hispanic-Latino Law Student Association.
Montelongo is the recipient of a 2015 Justice John Paul Stevens Public Interest Summer Fellowship and spent this summer in the Office of the State Appellate Defender, a state agency that represents indigent persons on appeal in criminal cases. A native Chicagoan, she graduated with honors from DePaul University with a degree in English and education. She earned a graduate degree in language and literacy from National Louis University. Prior to law school, Montelongo taught elementary school.
Michael Angarola, the scholarship's namesake, was a native Chicagoan who graduated from Lane Technical High School. Angarola earned his bachelor's degree from Southern Illinois University and his law degree from IIT Chicago-Kent. He served in the Marine Corps reserves as a sergeant. Angarola died October 29, 1987, following an automobile accident on the Kennedy Expressway in Chicago.
Angarola joined the Cook County State's Attorney's Office in 1974. There, he served under Republican and Democratic administrations and prosecuted more than 200 criminal trials—including a variety of high-profile cases. In 1985, then Cook County State's Attorney Richard M. Daley appointed Angarola to the position of first assistant, where he oversaw the criminal, special prosecutions, public interest, civil actions, investigations and legal support bureaus of the State's Attorney's Office.
In 1986, Angarola successfully argued Illinois v. Krull, a Fourth Amendment case, before the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the state of Illinois.
Founded in 1888, IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law is the law school of Illinois Institute of Technology, also known as Illinois Tech, a private, technology-focused, research university offering undergraduate and graduate degrees in engineering, science, architecture, business, design, human sciences, applied technology, and law.
