A Faithful Engineer

Faithful Alabi is a junior electrical engineering major who is doing some heavy lifting in, and outside of, his classes in the College of Engineering.

Meet Faithful Alabi. This junior electrical engineering major is not only doing some heavy mental lifting in his classes in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, he is also doing some physical heavy lifting in his position on the UTSA Power Lifting team.

“I joined the powerlifting team my freshman year of college because my older brother (who also goes to UTSA) was part of the team and he thought I would enjoy it,” he said. “After a long day of engineering classes, I look forward to hitting the weight room and taking my mind off of things. It is a great stress reliever for me.”

Faithful works on a project with his lab partner in EE5113: Electrical Engineering Laboratory I.

In between studying for his engineering classes, Alabi manages to find time to compete at powerlifting events around the country. This past fall, he competed in the Raw National in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he got second place in his age division and weight class. He squatted 562 pounds, benched 370 pounds and deadlifted 633 pounds. He plans to compete again with the rest of the UTSA Powerlifting Team at the Collegiate Nationals in Providence, Rhode Island, in April 2016.

One might not think that engineering and powerlifting have a lot in common, but Alabi would disagree.

“Engineering and lifting are similar in many ways,” he said. “They are both competitive and require hard-work and dedication. Plus, engineering and powerlifting are both more technical than they seem — they both require a lot of your time!”

Alabi is one of the 45 members of the UTSA PowerLifting team, who are all from a variety of different majors across campus. In addition to Alabi, there are six other engineering students on the team: senior mechanical engineering student Paul Alabi (Faithful’s older bother), senior mechanical engineering student George Pena, senior electrical engineering student Jonathan Lwowski, senior electrical engineering student Jake Martinez, freshman mechanical engineering student Raynard Taylor, and to pre-engineering student Marisol Palacios.

– Story and photos by Deborah Silliman/College of Engineering