The past two years I was president, but this year I’m the undergrad student representative of the club. Our e-board consisted of two undergrads the past two years, but now we mostly had grad students, except for the social chair is an undergrad with me.

What’s the organization about?

It’s mostly just to bring unity with the Sri Lankan grad students and undergrad students, and there’s also families in the East Lansing-Okemos area. It’s also open to other friends, you don’t really have to be Sri Lankan to be involved in it. It’s also there to form a sense of community, because we know a couple of families.

The way we do that is by holding an annual potluck. There’s one coming up in a couple of weeks that they’re planning. We just have all the families come, bring food and we all have dinner together.

And the annual Global Festival, all of us volunteer to have a booth at the festival that day, and when visitors come by we answer questions, we dress in formal attire and we just kind of do that stuff. With the tsunami a few years ago, they actually raised a lot of money.

What are other ways to get involved?

We don’t really have formal meetings because we’re a really small organization and most of our members have families, so they’re really busy. But if we had more undergrads show up, we would probably have more formal meetings. We usually just have our e-board meetings.

The way to get involved is just to go on the Student Life Web site, or e-mail one of us at slsa@msu.edu.

We’re just a pretty small group and we’d like to have more members, so we could have more money and get-togethers. Most of the group is older members, so we’d like to have more undergrad members.

Where are you from?

I was born here in Royal Oak. My parents were born in Sri Lanka, but they have lived over here since 1974 or 1975, so they’ve been here a good 30 years.

Where is your family from?

My cousin goes here, most of my close family and friends are at Michigan State too, otherwise they’re from the metro Detroit area.

We have our own community in metro Detroit, but we’re not totally involved in it. My family has been here for so long that we only follow a few traditions.

I’m the only child, so it’s just me and my parents, otherwise we live pretty close to my relatives — like my mom moved here with her three sisters back in the ’70s. So we live pretty much near each other.

Why did you choose to attend MSU?

I liked the variety of programs — it was more open. I was also interested in engineering and my older cousin highly recommended it, and my cousin my age was coming here. They liked how it was open, and you can change your major whenever you want.

What’s your favorite part of MSU?

Meeting a lot of different people. Michigan State is really friendly, I believe. And people I know that went to other schools, they said they were really intimidated their freshman year, but when I came freshman year, I didn’t feel like I was all by myself; everyone was really friendly.

And even now as a senior, I meet everyone new and no one’s really uptight or anything, that’s really the best part of State.

How and why did you choose engineering as your major?

Before I knew I wanted to be involved in science, at first I wanted to be an architect, but as I learned more about it, freshman and sophomore year, I learned that it was more about landscape architecture, land development and transportation.

What do you see as your future in engineering?

I plan on probably being in a consulting firm in transportation, land development — like traffic planning or residential areas.

What do you like to do in your spare time?

I like to catch up on movies, hang out with friends. I have a couple family get-togethers now and then.