Babajide Milton Macaulay
MSc Sustainable Environmental Management, 2013
LECTURER AND FOUNDER OF ILLUMANIA
“During my studies I developed great relationships with lecturers including Dr. Peter Burt and David Grzywacz. Their kindness and support of my PhD application was a huge reason why I won my second Commonwealth Scholarship.”
In September 2012, Babajide Milton Macaulay arrived at our Medway campus to study an MSc degree in Sustainable Environmental Management with the Natural Resources Institute. “I honestly had a very challenging experience studying abroad but it ended on an excellent note as my experience at NRI surpassed my expectations.” He struggled initially with academic writing styles until a suggested visit to the writing support team at the Drill Hall Library. “I had only 3 sessions with them and my writing improved drastically. In the end, I graduated with a Distinction on my programme and even got an award for my MSc Thesis. A big thank you also has to go to my Project Supervisor, Dr. Debbie Rees, whose support helped me enormously. ”
Babajide had won a Commonwealth Scholarship which enabled him to study at the University, the first of two such awards (his second Commonwealth Scholarship led to his PhD at University of Manchester). Reflecting on receiving the Scholarship “makes me feel special, favoured and blessed. The Commonwealth Scholarship is one of the most prestigious postgraduate scholarships in the world, only about 27,500 candidates have won the scholarship since its inception in 1959, so to have won such a globally–competitive scholarship twice means so much to me and has indeed helped accelerate my career growth in academia.”
Indeed, Babajide now teaches at the Federal University of Technology in Akure (FUTA), Nigeria, where he completed his undergraduate degree. He takes great pleasure “to empower the younger generation to make them assets to themselves and to society” and has been recognised by the National Association of Biology Students (FUTA Chapter) with the ‘Best Lecturer/Most Supportive Lecturer Award’ three times.
Alongside his teaching, in 2018 Babajide founded ILLUMANIA, an online education consultancy. ILLUMANIA provides a wide range of academic support to students, graduates and business professionals, including dissertation reviews, CV reviews, career counselling and scholarship application guidance. “Of all the services we offer, the scholarship application guidance is our most popular service, producing a total of 96 scholarship winners (a success rate of 70%) and attracting over 5 Million USD in scholarship benefits.”
In addition to his academic and professional achievements, Babajide is a Fellow of the Royal Commonwealth Society and has also volunteered with the British Council and University of Greenwich. “The great sense of satisfaction that comes from realising that you contributed to someone else’s victory is the oil in my wheel that enables me to run this race in perpetuity irrespective of the challenges on my path.”
Looking to the future, Babajide is focusing on his academic work – he plans Postdoctoral research in groundwater contamination studies to help set up a specialist research unit at FUTA – while seeking to expand ILLUMANIA to international markets, including North America.
Babajide Milton Macaulay
MSc Sustainable Environmental Management, 2013
LECTURER AND FOUNDER OF ILLUMANIA
“During my studies I developed great relationships with lecturers including Dr. Peter Burt and David Grzywacz. Their kindness and support of my PhD application was a huge reason why I won my second Commonwealth Scholarship.”
In September 2012, Babajide Milton Macaulay arrived at our Medway campus to study an MSc degree in Sustainable Environmental Management with the Natural Resources Institute. “I honestly had a very challenging experience studying abroad but it ended on an excellent note as my experience at NRI surpassed my expectations.” What impressed Babajide from the outset was the thoroughness of the staff, including Programme Leader Dr. Peter Burt, who, only 2 months into the course, had asked the class to submit their preferred research topics in order to allocate supervisors. This meant that project supervision could begin by the third month of study, giving Babajide and his cohort more than enough time to turn in a well-researched dissertation.
However, Babajide struggled initially with academic writing styles until a suggested visit to the writing support team at the Drill Hall Library. “I had only 3 sessions with them and my writing improved drastically. In the end, I graduated with a Distinction on my programme and even got an award for my MSc Thesis. A big thank you also has to go to my Project Supervisor, Dr. Debbie Rees, whose support helped me enormously.”
Babajide had won a Commonwealth Scholarship which enabled him to study at the University, the first of two such awards (his second Commonwealth Scholarship led to his PhD at University of Manchester). Reflecting on receiving the Scholarship “makes me feel special, favoured and blessed. The Commonwealth Scholarship is one of the most prestigious postgraduate scholarships in the world, only about 27,500 candidates have won the scholarship since its inception in 1959, so to have won such a globally–competitive scholarship twice means so much to me and has indeed helped accelerate my career growth in academia.”
Indeed, Babajide now teaches at the Federal University of Technology in Akure (FUTA), Nigeria, where he completed his undergraduate degree. He takes great pleasure “to empower the younger generation to make them assets to themselves and to society” and has been recognised by the National Association of Biology Students (FUTA Chapter) with the ‘Best Lecturer/Most Supportive Lecturer Award’ three times.
Alongside his teaching, in 2018 Babajide founded ILLUMANIA, an online education consultancy. ILLUMANIA provides a wide range of academic support to students, graduates and business professionals, including dissertation reviews, CV reviews, career counselling and scholarship application guidance. “Of all the services we offer, the scholarship application guidance is our most popular service, producing a total of 96 scholarship winners (a success rate of 70%) and attracting over 5 Million USD in scholarship benefits.”
In addition to his academic and professional achievements, Babajide is a Fellow of the Royal Commonwealth Society and has also volunteered with the British Council and University of Greenwich. “The great sense of satisfaction that comes from realising that you contributed to someone else’s victory is the oil in my wheel that enables me to run this race in perpetuity irrespective of the challenges on my path.”
Looking to the future, Babajide is focusing on his academic work – he plans Postdoctoral research in groundwater contamination studies to help set up a specialist research unit at FUTA – while seeking to expand ILLUMANIA to international markets, including North America.
