Awards
- Bicentennial Medal - 2019
About Cora Griffin Grounds
Cora J. Griffin Grounds is an IU alumna and former member of the IU Board of Trustees. Griffin Grounds earned B.S. from IUPUI, and a dual M.P.A./J.D. from the IU School of Public and Environmental Affairs and McKinney School of Law at IUPUI. Griffin Grounds was appointed a student trustee by then Governor Mitch Daniels in 2011, becoming the nineteenth student appointed to the IU Board of Trustees.
Griffin Grounds served as the IUPUI Undergraduate Student Government vice president, president of the IUPUI Student Foundation, president of the Student Activities Programming Board, president of Alpha Lambda Delta, and served as a campus housing resident assistant. She was an ambassador for the School of Public and Environmental Affairs and a Bepko Scholar and Fellow. She was actively involved in several community service projects, including as a member of the board of directors for the Indiana Chapter of the Huntington's Disease Society of America, and the IUPUI Jagathon Committee, which raises money for Riley Hospital for Children. She was honored as an Outstanding Woman Student Leader by the IUPUI Office for Women and the Office of Student Involvement, received the William M. Plater Civic Engagement, and was named a Torchbearer Award finalist by the Indiana Commission for Women.
She has extensive experience working at various levels of state and local governments having worked with the Indiana General Assembly, Senate Majority from 2010 to 2011, the Indiana Bar Foundation in 2010, as well as for Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard from 2009-2010, and the office of Senator Richard Lugar in 2009. Griffin Grounds also interned in Washington D.C. with the Washington Leadership Program, and studied at King's College in London and the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin, Germany. She currently works as assistant director of planned giving at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute, IN.
Griffin Grounds received the IU Bicentennial Medal in September 2019 in recognition of her distinguished service as a student trustee on the IU Board of Trustees.