2003 Alumni News

Peri Periakaruppan is IT Student Board President

Peri Periakaruppan, a senior from Maple Grove, Minnesota, is serving as the president of the Institute of Technology (IT) Student Board for the 2003-2004 academic year.

Peri became interested in student government while in high school, and has been involved with the IT Student Board since his freshman year at Minnesota. He was an at-large member of the Student Board for his first two years, director of programs last year, and then this year was elected president.

The IT Student Board works to foster communication among and partnerships between student organizations in the Institute of Technology. They also provide input to IT, and representatives have seats on IT academic committees. The board sponsors forums where students can make their voices heard on issues that affect them. This year, forum topics included increasing student retention and four-year graduation rates, and the Minnesota hockey riots.

Peri says, “Leading the student board has helped me learn the importance of creating and maintaining long-term goals in order to stay focused and improve productivity of all the members involved. In addition to the management skills I have learned on the board, I was able to see how creating collaborations with groups having common goals can help create new and stronger initiatives.”

An additional responsibility of Peri’s role as president is representing IT students by being an IT Alumni Society board member. In that role, he helps facilitate the IT mentor program.

Peri’s emphasis is the Environment. He plans to graduate in Spring 2004 and then pursue a graduate degree in the industrial hygiene area of public health.