Baldwin Onuma Okezie, professor emeritus of food science and nutrition at Alabama A&M University, passed away on February 4. He was 89 years old.
Born in Nigeria, Dr. Okezie came to the United States in 1962 on a scholarship to attend to the University of California, Davis, where he earned both his bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in animal husbandry. He then returned to Nigeria to work for the Biafran Ministry of Animal Health and the Biafran Rehabilitation Commission. In 1971, he moved back to the United States to complete his Ph.D. in food science and technology from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
After earning his doctorate in 1974, Dr. Okezie taught international food science and nutrition at Howard University in Washington, D.C., for one year. In 1975, he joined the faculty of Alabama A&M University, where he would stay for the remainder of his career. Over the course of his 35-year tenure, he frequently collaborated with international research partners on projects regarding food security, nutrition, and agricultural development. Dr. Okezie spent several years as AAMU’s director of international programs and was a key developer of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Peanut Collaborative Research Support Program. He retired from AAMU in 2010 as a professor emeritus.
In 2017, Dr. Okezie established the Okezie Education Foundation to provide STEM scholarships to college students from his hometown in Nigeria.
