A message from your Alumni Association President


I am honored to have been selected by the Alumni Association’s Board of Directors as your president for 2012 through 2014. At the same time, I am humbled to know that I, along with my executive committee, will represent all those who have graduated from FIU, and those who are currently attending, along with those students who will soon attend in the next two years.

Alumni Association Board 1012-13

The 2012-’13 Alumni Association Board.

If you would have asked me upon my graduation back in 1991 if I thought I would be president of the Alumni Association, I would have responded, “Impossible!” If you would have asked me that same question two years ago, I would have answered, “It’s inevitable!” Because that’s what we do here at FIU. We turn the impossible into the inevitable.

The FIU campus is where I grew up. At the age of 9, I played football for the Tamiami Colts. I attended Southwest Senior High School, and my purple pride Eagles played several football games where our Panthers football team plays their games today. I have been schooled, counseled and advised here. I have brought my children here and they are a part of this great FIU community.

When I graduated in 1991 for the first time, the Alumni Association had just 509 members. 10 years later in 2001, the membership had grown to just 800. But then we became serious about things. The membership is now close to 20,000. That’s an increase of 2,475 percent in just 10 years.

So now imagine where FIU’s Alumni Association will be in 10 years. In the year 2022, we will have:

  • More than 50,000 Alumni Association members
  • An alumni base with many more well-recognized names
  • A well-funded First Generation Scholarship Fund supported by our Alumni Association
  • One of the best recognized and most elegant award ceremonies in the country – the Torch Awards contributing more than $100,000 to the university on an annual basis
  • One of the most coveted and well-attended fishing tournaments in the country
  • Alumni who are Worlds Ahead and renowned for returning to the university and actively supporting its academic programs
  • Alumni who are raging mad about FIU collegiate athletic programs
  • Alumni who remember their roots and give back through gifts and endowments.
  • An Alumni Center that remembers those that graduated from this great university

I call upon all of you to become ambassadors of FIU, tell the story, contribute and bring new members back to our home. I look forward to working with each and every one of you in the coming days and months.

With gratitude and congratulations,

 

Gonzalo Acevedo ’91, MBA ’10

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