International student shares Illinois experience and career story

When Victor Jonathan earned his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1980 his last name was Onafuye. A few years later, when he became a U.S. citizen, he took his father’s first name as his last.

“The judge at the naturalization ceremony said I could change my name right then and there, so I did. It made me feel more American, and back in the day, it eliminated any discrimination based on my nationality,” he said.

Like many aerospace engineering students at Illinois, Jonathan excelled in school, named academic prefect as a senior and graduating first in his class at Mayflower Secondary School in Ikenne, Ogun State Nigeria. In addition to Illinois, he got offers from the University of Kansas and the University of California Berkeley. He said, although the other two schools had warmer climates, he chose Illinois because he loved the program.

As the youngest child in his family, Jonathan said it came as a shock to his parents when he decided to study in the U.S., “but they were supportive.”

Jonathan said he felt comfortable at UIUC quickly. His first meeting on campus was with the International Student Council where it was recommended that he live in the International House on John Street.

“It was across the street from the Century 21 Hotel building which was the tallest building in Champaign at the time,” Jonathan said. “My roommate was from Puerto Rico.”

Because he was in a house with all international students, they could all experience the newness of the American college campus together.

Communicating wasn’t a struggle as Nigeria was a British Colony until 1960 with English being the national language. “The food was different, but it didn’t take long for me to start liking hamburgers.”

Compared to this year’s first-year class of over 170 students, the undergraduate program in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s was extremely small with only about 20 students in Jonathan’s class.

 “In terms of international students in aerospace, I was the only Black African. There was a student from China, but all of the rest of my classmates were white, and only one female, Gail Jonkouski. We were a tight-knit group, though. We went to all our classes together and did our projects together. Everybody knew everybody.”

“Unfortunately, when I finished at Illinois the aerospace industry was in a slowdown in the 1980. I thought about returning to Nigeria, but I got an offer from Cook Electric in Morton Grove, a suburb of Chicago. The guy who hired me was also a U of I engineering graduate, and he hired me as an electro-mechanical engineer.”

A few years later, Cook was bought by Northern Telecom and resulted in cutbacks. He had been thinking about getting an MBA and decided now would be a good time to do it.

“Once I was in the business world, to be eligible for management positions it was better to have an MBA, so I completed my MBA in 1985 at Governors State University.”

Jonathan had become more involved in software engineering, writing codes in Fortran and PLI on programmable equipment and numerically controlled machinery, so with his MBA in hand he went into business applications and became a project manager and leader. He worked for Sargent & Lundy Engineers.

“I worked on the Bryon and Braidwood Nuclear Power Plant west of Chicago near Rockford,” he said. “I oversaw the software development for running nuclear power plants and structural engineering. At the time this digital 3D diagramming technology called Computer Graphics was just coming into play. It was amazing.

“From there I went into business application consulting. It was booming. I went deep into business applications and managing business project applications and database development and moved to Florida. I was working for a company doing work for the telephone companies GTE and Bell.

“That’s when I decided to start my own company Pixel Information Technology Corp now Pixelcorp--working with those other companies as sub-contractors.”

PixelCorp is a consulting firm for information technology system development, specializing in application development, network operations, program/project management, data management, and database administration in businesses—primarily pharmaceutical, manufacturing companies, and state government applications in areas such as Medicaid, Medicare, and children and family services.

“I was the product portfolio manager for the State of North Carolina, for example, so I was in charge of developing their Medicaid application. We design the system, come up with the requirements, and then we get other vendors to bid to actually either sell us a turnkey product or do the development. These are huge projects–over $100 million.”

He said the courses he took at Illinois in computer sciences and programming and electrical engineering served him well over the years.

Now, as he gets older, but still running Pixel Corp, Jonathan said he hires younger employees to do the tech crunching aspects of the work, giving himself more time to focus on the planning and managing.

While at Illinois, Jonathan was active in AIAA and IEEE – the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. And his best friend at UIUC was a fellow aerospace student Robert Grimshaw, who introduced him to the Illinois chapter of Navigator’s Christian Fellowship, which also provided a strong group of friends. Later in life, after being appointed to leadership roles in his church, Jonathan got a Doctorate in Practical Theology.

“When I was a student at U of I, it was one of the best times of my life,” he said. “It’s probably true for a lot of people. It’s unique to be among other students. It was an exciting time.”

Victor Onafuye (Jonathan) is included in a UIUC library webpage about student life and culture archives entitled “Illini Everywhere: Nigerian Illini, Since 1939.”  His senior photo can also be seen on page 256 of the 1980 Illio.