Getting to Know Sunday Obazuaye, Ph.D. and APU Alumnus
By Miriam Mezzetti
Alaska Pacific University Alumni help to make our community truly great. They are a truly integral part of the university community and help to shape our culture. We value the stories our alumni have to share about the APU experience and why they chose to study at Alaska Pacific. Dr. Sunday Obazuaye is among these distinguished alumni.
Dr. Obazuaye is originally from Nigeria. From a young age, he hoped to complete his college education. After spending time teaching elementary school in Nigeria, he heard about APU from a friend named Felix who was studying here. Because of APU’s competitive scholarship package and because our financial aid department helped him to find work-study opportunities, Dr. Obazuaye was able to make his dreams a reality and to achieve his bachelors degree in management science from APU.
Dr. Obazuaye remembers his time at APU fondly. At APU he was able to interact with people from all across the world, and he emphasizes how important this international approach has been in his life. His experience at APU influences his current style of mentoring his students. After living and studying with students from several different nationalities at Alaska Pacific, and after participating in a model UN here, he has become the faculty advisor for the model UN at Cerritos College in Norwalk, California, and emphasizes an international perspective in his courses.
Since attending APU, Dr. Obazuaye has achieved both his Masters of Public Administration and his PhD in Political Science. He has extensive experience in both business administration and planning, as well as in research and higher education. He cites his personalized experience at APU as one of the reasons why he decided to become a professor himself. He and his classmates had the opportunity to interact closely with APU professors due to the low faculty/student ratio. He recalls the influence this mentorship has had on his life even years later, noting the sadness which he and his classmates felt upon learning of the late Rusty Meyer’s passing shortly after the last Alumni reunion in June of 2015.
Dr. Obazuaye emphasizes the importance of office hours and a self-directed education to his students, now. An education is what you make of it, he says, it is “not the name of the institution that matters, it is what you [as a student] bring to the classroom. Students who take the opportunity to make contact with professors are the ones who succeed. If you want to succeed, APU is a good school because of the good faculty/student ratio and because you will get to see more than one way of life from the diverse and international culture at APU.”
Dr. Obazuaye quotes Nelson Mandela, noting that, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” He sees teaching as changing the world, one student at a time. We congratulate Dr. Obazuaye upon his vision and dedication to education. APU shares this dedication to changing the world through education and making student’s dreams a reality. We are happy to have shared this spirit of learning with Dr. Obazuaye and our other alumni!
