EOP Trailblazer, Augustine “Gus” Chavez

Dedicated to social and educational justice and equality, Mr. Chavez was the founding director of San Diego State University’s Office of Educational Opportunity Programs and Ethnic Affairs. He also helped create what is now the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at San Diego State University (SDSU). Mr. Chavez is also credited for establishing an extensive collection of Chicano- and Chicana-related historical materials housed in the Love Library.

Mr. Chavez was born in Sonora, Texas. After graduating from high school, he joined the U.S. Navy and served as a hospital corpsman from 1962 to 1966 at Naval Medical Center San Diego. After leaving the Navy, he attended San Diego City College from 1966 to 1968 and then transferred to what was then San Diego State College, where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in political science in 1971. He was appointed director of Student Support Services upon his graduation.
In 1969, Chavez joined students and faculty inspired by the civil rights and Chicano movements to found what is now called the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies. That year, the university established its Office of Educational Opportunity Programs and Ethnic Affairs to aid students from low-income backgrounds and historically underserved communities with services that helped recruit them to San Diego State and support their academic success once here.

Chavez was appointed director of the fledgling EOP in 1974 and was charged with restructuring and realigning the five separate EOPs—Native American, Black, Chicano, Filipino and Women—into one unified program. After nearly three decades as EOP director, Mr. Chavez retired in 2003 but continued to advocate for the university to better recruit and retain students from the area’s historically underserved communities.

Subsequently, he co-founded various university organizations, including RAZA Advocates for Chicanos in Higher Education (RACHE) and the CSU EOP Directors Association. He was the lead co-founder and organizer of the Defend the Honor Campaign, an organization dedicated to preserving and acknowledging the contributions of Latino and Latina veterans who served in WWII, Korea and Vietnam by advocating for the inclusion of their military experiences and civil rights struggles in documentaries, books and school curricula.

To those who knew him personally, Mr. Chavez was a funny, warm character who often had a joke at the ready and a word of encouragement following close behind. SDSU plans to establish a scholarship in Chavez’s name, where he mentored and inspired countless of students.