Preethi Periyakoil
“I have always been passionate about finding novel ways to provide support and counseling to stressed students. I am grateful to Caltech for giving me an opportunity to make my dream a reality.”
Preethi Periyakoil earned her BS in Computer Science and was an Associate Software Engineer at Salesforce in San Francisco. She recently began as an MD/PhD student in the Tri-Institutional Program at Weill Cornell Medical College. However, it was her experience volunteering as a crisis counselor for the San Francisco Suicide Prevention hotline that inspired her project — to start a university text line to reduce college campus suicides and suicide attempts.
Supported by Chang Prize funding, Periyakoil will explore launching a platform at Caltech and the University of California, Berkeley that will provide 24-hour immediate emotional support for those in need. Once the platform is live, she hopes to expand the program to other universities across the nation.
“College students are vulnerable to stresses that come from academic pressures, new living conditions, and interpersonal relationships,” Periyakoil says. “I propose to create a student support text line prototype that will enable college students to receive peer support and counseling in a safe, supportive, and secure online platform.”
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Student Support Text Line
Being a student is stressful business. I certainly learned this the hard way first at Caltech and...
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Student Support Text Line
Over the past few months, I have experienced firsthand the kind of stress and isolation that the ...
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Student Support Text Line
This pandemic has changed our lives and will likely leave scars.
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Student Support Text Line
It seems fitting that this Chang Prize update fall in the month of September, which is widely rec...