rhodes scholar

Cornell Alumna Awarded Prestigious Rhodes Scholarship

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Widely considered one of the most prestigious honors a student can earn, the Rhodes Scholarship is a postgraduate scholarship that provides students the ability to study at the University of Oxford without paying tuition fees and receive an annual stipend of £13,000. The Scholarship bears the name of British businessman and politician Cecil John Rhodes, who founded the award over a hundred years ago in the hopes of bringing English-speaking nations closer together.

Arts & Culture

Telling Truths: Semi Chellas Reveals Secrets from the Mad Men Writers’ Room

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Of Semi Chellas’ numerous accolades, the one by which I was most impressed was that she was the writer of the first and only screenplay to ever be published by Cornell’s reputed Epoch magazine — and it was the first screenplay she had ever written. Perhaps this is an indication of someone who truly has an instantly-recognizable talent, a talent that, in Chellas’ case, propelled her towards becoming co-producer and writer for the brilliant, Emmy-winning Mad Men in its fifth season. Chellas talked about this experience in her Thursday talk, “Telling Secrets: Notes from the Writers’ Room.”

That’s what we — the die hard fans, the aspiring writers — wanted to know: what is the secret to a show like Mad Men? Mentioning the high level of secrecy surrounding the show, Chellas joked how strange it was for her to be revealing these secrets to us. Her informal, engaging talk was punctuated by short clips, mostly from Mad Men, which she used to illustrate larger creative processes or to explain what went into a particular scene.