UCLA center Myles Johnson hopes to inspire other Black students to follow his size-17 footsteps toward a career in engineering.
Gigi Johnson had intended her query as a way of stimulating more than small talk at the restaurant near their Long Beach home. She knew that basketball players who went on to the NBA usually gave back to their communities and told her son to pick a passion project, something he could sustain.
Rick Johnson is an electrical supervisor with the Los Angeles Unified School District and his sister, Camille Lewis, holds a master’s degree in electrical engineering from Georgia Tech. Gigi Johnson had taken engineering classes at Long Beach State before veering into criminal justice and a job with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in Customs and Border Protection.
It wasn’t all math and science. He studied Japanese in high school, reaching conversational level, and developed a love of cooking, especially chicken dishes. He cultivated an early interest in philanthropy, handing out boxes of grilled chicken on Los Angeles’ skid row and later traveling to Puerto Rico to distribute sneakers to needy children.
Those dual passions required some juggling. At Rutgers, the basketball team set its practice schedule around his engineering classes. Double reminders on his phone let him know where he needed to be, one notifying him two hours before something and another 30 minutes ahead.His smarts made him the head of the class.Johnson towered over his classmates and even some teachers, always measuring off the charts.There was no easy explanation for this blossoming beanstalk.
He was known as “Myles the Monster” in a nod to his size, even though the nickname didn’t really fit someone so soft-spoken and sociable. As of this fall, only five of the 191 faculty members in the school of engineering are Black, up from two as of 2019. School officials say they have initiated programs to improve diversity while being constrained by Proposition 209, the California law that prohibits race from being used as a factor in public education hiring practices.
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