A tour from a fellow student changed Jones’ major and her trajectory at Georgia Tech, putting her on a career path in materials, energy, and more.
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A number of factors brought Jacqueline Gilyard Jones to Georgia Tech after her high school graduation. The biggest was her parents.
“They sacrificed so much for me to ensure that I would have a great education,” Jones said. “My mother, Velma, attended college and later become a statistician. She knew that educational attainment is a primary driver of social mobility. As a result, she made sure that her children received a college education.”
To honor her parents’ sacrifices, and give other students from underrepresented backgrounds the same opportunity, Jones has established the Robert & Velma Gilyard Memorial Scholarship to support students in the School of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE).
Jones’ road to campus began when she traveled from her home in Maryland to attend “Minority Introduction to Engineering,” a Georgia Tech summer program for high school students. She had already been accepted by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York. But it was her positive summer experience, and the friends she made in the program, that led her to Atlanta for her freshman year.
Jones started as an industrial management major. Although her grades and test scores were high enough to be accepted as an engineering major, none of the fields piqued her interest. That changed when she met Wendell, another Black student who was majoring in ceramic engineering and gave her a tour of the Bunger-Henry Building.
“The hands-on nature of materials fed my love for science in a way the other majors didn’t,” Jones said. “That tour changed my major and the trajectory of my life.”
Jacqueline Gilyard Jones with her mother, Velma, and father, Robert, in 1984 on her Georgia Tech graduation day.
Jones became the first Black woman — and the second Black student — to graduate with a degree in ceramic engineering in 1984. Her senior thesis, an independent research project, was a difficult and time-consuming task. But she said it empowered her and prepared her for the workforce.
“I felt like I could do anything when I left campus. You couldn’t tell me anything was too hard. Having that attitude entering the workforce was huge,” she said.
Jones has enjoyed a successful career in consumer products, glassware, aerospace, and energy. She became one of California’s leading strategists in the integration of clean energy resources while at Southern California Edison from 1998 to 2015. Jones also founded BioPower Enterprises in 2017, leading the design and development of systems to eliminate food waste.
“Every time I pivoted to a new industry or product, I was grateful for the solid engineering training I received at Tech,” Jones said. “This valuable, hands-on experience working in materials research is both a hallmark of this major and Georgia Tech’s approach to teaching materials engineering to undergraduates.”
Jones said her current goal is to provide a new generation of Black students with the same feeling she had in MSE expand their pipeline into the materials engineering field.
“We’re not going to solve the housing crisis, climate change, or find clean sources of energy without new materials. And creating new materials means you need input from a variety of voices. Black students need to be part of these solutions,” she said. “I’m hopeful that I can help bring more perspectives as engineers address these and other societal issues to create solutions that represent everyone.”
Jacqueline Gilyard Jones receives the College’s Distinguished Alumni Award in 2023 from Raheem Beyah and fellow Georgia Tech graduate Sandy Magnus.
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