College Council (CC) elected second-year Neil Shah as chair of CC Wednesday in a special election to fill the seat.

According to Undergraduate Liasion to the Board of Trustees and second-year Frank Alarcon, former CC chair Jason Cigan emailed the council in the final days of winter break to inform them that he would not be at the University this winter for personal reasons.

Two CC members ran for the position: Shah and fourth-year Joseph Dozier. Shah was voted in by CC members in the closed election.

Shah has helped coordinate the Student Government–sponsored (SG) airport shuttles at the end of the quarter and coordinated an SG hot chocolate study break on the quad at the end of November.

Shah said attending SG meetings helped him to find specific issues he wanted to address. “I’ve only been in Student Government for a year officially, but I went to almost every meeting my first year,” he said. “I had a lot of concerns with the way Student Government was shaped, and I wanted to fix them.”

He said his main priority is to improve the lack of communication between College Council and the Graduate Council.