(Photo: www.gatech.edu)

The Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta hosts the largest engineering program in the country. Nearly 60 percent of its students are pursuing an engineering degree. On July 1, one of Georgia Tech’s alumni who once sat in those engineering classes will head the department.

Dr. Gary S. May, Ph.D., will be appointed as the first African-American dean of the College of Engineering at Georgia Tech. May currently serves as the college’s chair of electrical and computer engineering—where he was also the first African-American to hold that position.

Tuesday marked the 57th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the monumental Supreme Court decision that deemed racial segregation in U.S. public schools unconstitutional, and today, through diversity initiatives over the years and through May’s appointment, Georgia Tech can celebrate the fruits of the court case decision.

“What adds to the historical context is that [Dr. May] is selected dean in the same year that Georgia Tech is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the matriculation of Black students,” Gordon Moore Jr., director of Georgia Tech’s Office of Minority Educational Development, tells a St. Louis newspaper.

May considers the position a “dream job.”