The Same Road Home
By: Olesea Svet, April 2026
There is a route through Boca Raton that Dr. Perumareddi knows by heart.
She drove it as a little girl, riding along when her father headed to work at ÎÔÁú×ÊÔ´Íø. She knows the turns the way you know a song you've heard a thousand times — not because you memorized it, but because it lived in you long before you thought to pay attention. For eighteen years, she was away. She trained in Mississippi, where she found a mentor who believed in her potential. She initially worked in emergency medicine, cared for patients in Family Medicine at a county clinic, and then practiced at the VA medical center in Memphis. Then she came back.
Now, she drives that same route every morning and finds herself, in a way she didn't quite plan for, teaching at the same institution where her father spent his career.
"It's truly a full circle moment," she says quietly. "To be home."
On April 15, at the 57th Annual Honors Convocation, FAU's Schmidt College of Medicine celebrated Dr. Perumareddi as ÎÔÁú×ÊÔ´Íø's 2026 Distinguished Teacher of the Year — the university's highest recognition for teaching excellence, awarded by the vote of students themselves.
A Professor's Daughter
Dr. Perumareddi's father joined FAU's faculty in the Department of Chemistry in 1967. She grew up watching him prepare for class with the kind of care most people reserve for things they love – pouring hours into preparing lectures, teaching late in labs, grading conscientiously, and staying long after to answer questions from students who needed more help. Years later, she learned he had gone out of his way to support faculty and graduate students alike - quietly, and well beyond what his role required. What stayed with her wasn't any particular spoken lesson. It was something she absorbed through observation.
"He always went the extra mile to help those in need," she says, "without seeking recognition or acknowledgement — it just came to him naturally and from the heart, always purely and gently, in an unassuming way."
Since moving back, she has had the privilege of connecting with several of her father's former graduate students, many from decades ago, who have reached out or visited to share the profound impact he had on their lives. One heartfelt message  arrived just last week. These are stories she never heard from him. She is learning them only now, through the people he quietly shaped, a testament to the humility with which he carried his influence.
That distinction matters to her. Not helpfulness as obligation. Not service as performance. Something quieter – a disposition toward generosity that doesn't need an audience.
She carried it into medicine. A chemistry degree from the University of Florida led her to Nova Southeastern, where she earned her DO and adopted the holistic approach that would define her: seeing the whole person, not just the diagnosis. Residency in Family Medicine at the University of Mississippi followed, where she was elected as chief resident. Her residency director offered her a faculty position right after graduation. She felt the pull knowing she enjoyed teaching but knew she wanted more clinical experience first.
She wasn't ready to stop learning.
The Teaching That Doesn't Show Up in a Syllabus
Dr. Perumareddi joined the Schmidt College of Medicine in 2015. "I have learned so much from my colleagues over the last decade," she says with genuine appreciation. Today she serves as Course Director for Pathophysiology and Therapeutics 3 — the second-year course sequence covering Renal, Reproductive, and Endocrine systems — and teaches as a facilitator in small groups including cardiology, diabetes rounds, and Clinical Learning Group, as well as directing the fourth-year Academic Medicine elective. In the clinical learning groups especially, she has built something intentional: a space where students feel safe enough to think out loud, and an environment where she hopes they look forward to coming to class.
"When students feel comfortable asking questions," she says, "even the most challenging material becomes more approachable and interesting."
But the teaching that matters most, she has found, often happens outside the curriculum entirely.
One student, a talented, hardworking young woman, came to her at a moment of serious doubt. She was questioning whether medicine was truly her path. Whether she belonged. The kind of moment that, without the right person in the right place, can quietly redirect a life.
Dr. Perumareddi made time for her. She listened. She encouraged. She stayed in that space.
"Amongst the tears and doubts, I think she just couldn't see the bright future that lay ahead for her and needed confidence. I didn't do anything extraordinary — just simply validated and gently encouraged her to continue. It was very rewarding to watch her later step into her potential, knowing then how wonderful she’d be as a physician."
The student found her footing, continued her training, and is now a physician, practicing in the community that needed her.
Chosen by the Students
The Distinguished Teacher of the Year is not selected by a committee. It is not awarded for publications or credentials. It comes from students — their letters, their voices, their votes. When Dr. Perumareddi learned she had been chosen, her first instinct was to go to her parents' home and tell her father.
"So many of the values I try to bring to my students," she says, "really come from Dad."
Reading the nomination letters, she says, touched her heart more than anything. The words her students chose tell their own story.
One graduate wrote that Dr. Perumareddi is someone they "truly counted on from year to year — a reputation she maintained across the entire student body." Another described her influence as one measured not by a semester, but by a lifetime: "This longitudinal mentorship is a testament to her genuine investment in her students' education, lives, and careers." A fellow alumnus reflected that she is "perhaps the most selfless, honest, down-to-earth professor and one of the greatest teachers" he had encountered — someone who "genuinely puts her students ahead of herself and strives to be their advocate." He closed with a single line: "She is one of the reasons why I want to pursue academic medicine as a career."
"It still feels surreal," she admits, "to receive this honor for something that brings me so much joy. I am incredibly grateful to have the opportunity to teach and mentor."
That's the thing about Dr. Perumareddi: she is genuine and warm in conversation — a person of depth who values and tries to live by compassion, kindness, humility, and gratitude. The recognition caught her off guard. And yet, to any student watching, it was only a matter of time.
"Dr. Perumareddi is a physician-educator who sees her students as whole people and never stops investing in them, long after they leave her classroom. That this honor came directly from the students themselves makes it all the more meaningful. She represents the very best of what the Schmidt College of Medicine stands for — and we are incredibly proud to call her one of our own."  — Lewis S. Nelson, MD, Dean, Schmidt College of Medicine
Full Circle
When she took the stage at the 57th Annual Honors Convocation to deliver the keynote address, Dr. Perumareddi brought with her a message her students had already seen her live — quietly, consistently, without ever needing an audience.
The lesson she most wants them to carry forward is simpler than anything she could write into a lecture:
"To carry genuine kindness into every part of their lives. To be patient. To help others, especially when there is nothing to gain — because that is true altruism and can really impact someone's life when they need it most."
It is, almost word for word, what she watched her father model for decades — on the same campus, at the same institution, along the same route she now drives every morning.
She left Boca Raton to become a physician. She came home to become something more: the kind of teacher who changes the trajectory of a life. The destination, it turns out, was always this.