By: Michael L. Jackson
A 2013 summer internship with diesel engine manufacturer Cummins has led to a full-time position for 2014 Kelley School of Business graduate Rishi Chandra. The accounting and supply chain management major recently accepted a position as a financial analyst at the company’s headquarters in Columbus, Indiana.
“I am planning to brush up on my Excel skills and travel with my friends before starting by the end of July,” said Chandra, a native of Mumbai, India.
The job offer caps a remarkable and memorable four years for Chandra at Kelley and IUPUI.
Earlier this year he was named as one of IUPUI’s Top 100 students for the second consecutive year, and at April’s awards dinner he was shocked to be named among the Top 10 male students for 2014.
“For sure, it was surprising,” he said of the Top 10 recognition. “The Top 100 students have all done amazing things. I don’t think it could have been easy to rate who was in the Top 10.”
Chandra’s parents woke up in the wee hours of the morning (4:30 a.m. in Mumbai) to talk with their son about the Top 100 dinner. “The moment I got Top 10, I called them first,” Chandra said of his parents, who made their first trip to Indianapolis for May’s graduation ceremony. “They didn’t really understand the importance, so I had to explain to them, ‘There are 30,000 students on campus, and 1,500 applied to the program.’ That’s when they realized it was a pretty big deal.”
Chandra first learned about Kelley during a college fair in his hometown. And when he arrived on the IUPUI campus for the start of the fall semester in 2010, he did so with the full intention of spending one year in Indianapolis before transferring to the Bloomington campus.
But eager to cure the homesickness he was feeling from being more than 8,000 miles away from his family, Chandra began pouring himself into campus activities. His first volunteer experience came at the IUPUI Regatta, and not only would he stay in Indy, the Regatta became a regular part of his life during the next three years.
“Because of the experiences I had at IUPUI that first year, I decided I didn’t want to leave all that I had built up in a year in Indianapolis,” he said. “Regatta will always be really close to my heart. It helped me ease into campus life, got me involved with people and helped me to begin making friends.”
Maureen Kinney, director of Undergraduate Programs at Kelley Indianapolis, also played a vital role in his decision to stay in Indianapolis.
“She’s awesome,” Chandra said of Kinney. “She played a really big part in comparing the pros and cons between both campuses and why I should stay here. She really helped me understand the personal attention that I could get from professors, and the impact that I could have on this campus.”
“I am so glad that I made that decision to stay at IUPUI.”