IIT Chicago-Kent students Meganne Britton-Trela and Helena Gonzalez receive the 2012 Marc Grinker Student Commitment Award

Meganne Britton-Trela and Helena Gonzalez, third-year students at IIT Chicago-Kent, have been named the recipients of the 2012 Marc Grinker Student Commitment Award.

The award was created in memory of Professor Marc A. Grinker, a member of the IIT Chicago-Kent faculty from 1990 until his death in 1996. Professor Grinker taught courses in legal writing, corporations, and securities law and served as the first director of the law school's Appellate Advocacy Program. Under his leadership, the program won local, regional and national individual and interscholastic honors.

Each year members of IIT Chicago-Kent's Moot Court Honor Society nominate their peers who have shown dedication to the program. Britton-Trela and Gonzalez, who both served as Moot Court Honor Society vice-presidents, will earned their Juris Doctor degrees from IIT Chicago-Kent on May 13, 2012.

Meganne Britton-Trela is a candidate for a certificate in Litigation and Alternative Dispute Resolution. She earned her undergraduate degree with honors in broadcast journalism from the University of Arkansas. Prior to law school, she served as the admissions and marketing director at St. Francis de Sales High School in Chicago. At IIT Chicago-Kent, Britton-Trela was member of the Moot Court Honor Society team that competed in the 2012 Moot Court National Championship tournament in Houston. She coached the IIT Chicago-Kent team that won this year's William E. McGee National Civil Rights Moot Court Competition.

Helena Gonzalez earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Florida with a major in economics and a minor in business administration. At IIT Chicago-Kent, Gonzalez was a member of the team that won the National Moot Court Competition's regional championship and advanced to the national finals in New York.

IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law is the law school of Illinois Institute of Technology, a private, Ph.D.-granting institution with programs in engineering, science, psychology, architecture, business, design and law. In 2008, IIT Chicago-Kent became the only law school ever to win the National Trial Competition and the National Moot Court Competition in the same year. In 2009, IIT Chicago-Kent successfully defended its title in the National Moot Court Competition to become the first law school in more than 30 years to win back-to-back championships in the largest appellate advocacy tournament in the United States.