Aparna Ramakrishnan has been named a 2025 Lincoln Academy Student Laureate. (Photo: Jenny Fontaine/UIC)
Thanks to the work of UIC senior Aparna Ramakrishnan, Illinois public school students in need of mental health resources now only need to look at their student identification cards to get help.
While still in high school, Ramakrishnan led a student push for the passage of HB 1778, which amended the School Code and the Mental Health Early Action on Campus Act, signed into law by Gov. JB Pritzker in 2021.
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The law requires school districts and public universities that issue student identification cards to students beginning in the seventh grade to include contact information for the National Prevention Lifeline, the Crisis Text Line, a local suicide prevention hotline and campus police/security numbers.
At UIC, she is a student leader and volunteer who has made significant contributions to the university and worked on health and housing policy issues at the national level.
Ramakrishnan was recently named a 2025 Lincoln Academy Student Laureate. The award is given to seniors — just one from each college in Illinois — who have followed in the path of former President Abraham Lincoln by committing themselves to leadership and positive social change.
“I think being a Lincoln Laureate is a testament to how much I’ve grown and learned during my time at UIC,” Ramakrishnan said. “Abraham Lincoln was a true servant leader. He embodied leadership in every single way by never straying from what the people wanted.”
Ramakrishnan, of Lisle Township, is majoring in public policy in the UIC College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs. She is also a member of the Honors College. She is graduating from UIC in December after three years and plans to stay at UIC and attend the College of Medicine next fall.
“I think UIC is one of the best places to get a college education, from the diverse student body all the way down into the research opportunities,” Ramakrishnan said. “I couldn’t be happier that I chose UIC, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone.”
Her dream is to become a child and adolescent psychiatrist and give young people the support she could have benefited from as an Asian American youth.
“I realized that I wanted to be that person who would be able to not only provide culturally competent care to adolescents but also advocate for large-scale policy reform so that no student, no person, would have to struggle,” she said.
Ramakrishnan is currently the vice president of See the Silver Lining, a volunteer organization that serves pediatric patients and their families at UI Health. She organized volunteer opportunities for people to spend time with the children in the pediatric ward and led fundraising efforts on behalf of the ward.
“One of my favorite things about See the Silver Lining is being able to bring small moments of joy to parents and families,” she said.
At UIC, Ramakrishnan joined UIC’s undergraduate student government as legislative director and learned how to work with stakeholders to amplify student voices and create long-lasting change. This was achieved by hosting numerous town halls through the student government on issues such as mental health awareness, campus safety and connecting students to campus resources.
As a student senator in the UIC Faculty Senate, she served on the Education Policy and Student Affairs committees and is also the undergraduate student representative on the Chancellor’s Committee on the Status of Asian Americans.
But her impact hasn’t just been on campus. In 2023, she interned with U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, where she helped his office serve constituents. That taught her how to understand people’s needs and connect them to vital services. There, she worked on issues affecting constituents in the Austin neighborhood on the West Side of Chicago.
She didn’t stop there, and in the summer of 2024, she interned with the Medicaid and CHIP Payment Access Commission in Washington, D.C., where she worked on health care policy issues involving practitioners, researchers and insurance providers.
“Being able to see how research translates into policy recommendations, and how that flows into the policy-making process, was one of the biggest things I learned from that internship — that research is not futile,” Ramakrishnan said.
Along with UIC, Ramakrishnan credited her parents, who immigrated to the United States from India, and her sister, who will graduate from medical school this year.
“I am incredibly indebted to them for making such a big move across the ocean, across multiple oceans, to be able to be here and give me an opportunity to learn and achieve my goals and even have the chance to have a great education,” Ramakrishnan said.
