Alumni Highlight
Accomplished Engineering Professor and Alumnus Creates Scholarships
More than 55 years after earning his bachelor’s degree from UCLA Engineering, Augustine Esogbue still recalls fondly his time at the school.
Having immigrated to the U.S. from his native Nigeria in the early 1960s to pursue an engineering career, Esogbue excelled in his studies at UCLA. He did feel lonely at times, he said, noting he was the only Black student in nearly all his engineering classes.
“I did not consider the challenge of being the only Black in my classes a major liability,” Esogbue said.
In addition to being a Bruin engineer, Esogbue was immersed in other fulfilling campus activities. This included a leadership position as Inaugural Executive Member of the International Affairs Council, as a letterman in the UCLA soccer squad, which was unbeaten for four years in the Pacific Coast Conference, as well as being a language instructor to the U.S. Peace Corps Nigeria group that trained at UCLA.