Volunteer of the Year Award - 2013: Mary Ellen Woods '80

2013: Mary Ellen Woods '80

For her tireless service to the Notre Dame Club of Chicago, her class, and her community, the Alumni Association presented its 2013 Volunteer of the Year award to Mary Ellen Woods ’80.

Mary Ellen has accumulated a substantial record as a volunteer with the Chicago club. She is the trustee and secretary of the club’s scholarship program and helps host an annual Mass and welcome dinner for those students. As an alumni school chairperson, she also helps represent Notre Dame to the wider world. She has been the club’s president, first vice president, and second vice-president, and a founding member of the events and groups that led to the Hesburgh Lecture Series and ND Women Connect.

Her efforts go beyond the club, however. Mary Ellen is a class officer and secretary, compiling the class column for Notre Dame Magazine and reaching out through new media like Facebook to keep her class involved.

In nominating her, other members of the class of 1980 described how just eight years after coeducation Mary Ellen embraced the role of becoming an active alumnae who “says without pretext that the day the scholarships are handed out to those students who have worked so hard to gain admittance is the best day of her year.”

They go on to say that she “melds past and future together, assuring that the best and brightest of students are able to attend Notre Dame and that those who have graduated do not forget the ties that bind. Mary Ellen embodies the Notre Dame spirit.”