Background Story: My teaching experience goes back to my high school years when I used to tutor young students in a variety of contexts and subjects, ranging from math and physics to swimming and music. Following that, I gained more teaching experience as a TA, during my graduate studies. After completing my PhD, I joined the School of Engineering Science in 2000, on a limited term position. I then worked for a company in Silicon Valley, from 2001 to 2003, and joined SFU for the second time in 2004, as a Lecturer. I was promoted to the rank of Senior Lecturer in 2009.

I always knew I enjoyed teaching, but perhaps the first time that I realized my true calling was in teaching, happened during the time that I was working for high-tech industry in California, on a weekend afternoon at a strawberry field! That day, an 8-year-old boy, whom I was meeting for the first time, asked me how we could predict which strawberries are the sweeter ones. I told him not only how I made my predictions but also why I thought my method worked. He then smiled at me and said: “You must be a teacher!” It was soon after this encounter that I applied to SFU for the second time and joined the School of Engineering Science as a lecturer.

Teaching Philosophy: When I started teaching at a young age, I quickly realized that students come with a wide range of learning capacities and potentials, and ever since, my fundamental and most general teaching philosophy has been that the responsibility of a teacher is to motivate and aid students to reach their full potential .

To apply this philosophy, I adapt my teaching strategies to students’ needs, considering factors such as students’ background, class size, and course level. For example, back in 2000, I taught courses with less than 40 students, who had quite strong academic backgrounds. My teaching was thus tuned to address this group of students. I could convey the basic concepts of the course quite rapidly and dedicate more time to discussing advanced and challenging concepts and problems. In recent years, I have been teaching courses with much larger enrollments. As expected, students are from a much wider range of academic backgrounds and strengths. I have thus adjusted my teaching method to accommodate the learning capacity of the majority of the students, while doing my best to identify students who are at either end of the spectrum, and provide additional guidance to them as needed.

Another aspect of teaching that I strongly believe in, especially in engineering education, is the responsibility of the educator to train professionals who are independent, critical, and creative thinkers. I believe that while the foundation of engineering education is the application of scientific and mathematical techniques to practical problems, a successful engineer also needs to obtain a deep understanding of the theoretical concepts behind the application. It is only with this understanding that an engineer can utilize learned techniques to solve new problems and design new concepts.

I believe that the best way for students to deeply understand and retain the knowledge that they gain in the classroom, is to be able to extend and connect their education to outside of the classroom. I use any opportunity to encourage my students to relate a course concept to a practical aspect of everyday life. For example, I connect topics in statistical analysis to predictions about the outcome of a political election going on at the time, or when introducing the topic of FM modulation, I encourage them to explain to a friend how this modulation technique works, next time they are listening to music on the radio.

I use several approaches in my teaching to address the fundamentals of my teaching philosophy (described above) and its complementary aspects. Briefly: I use various techniques to implement an active teaching and learning environment in class; I create a mutually respectful and safe environment for my students and myself, inside and outside of the classroom; I try to reach out to students who either need extra help, or have a stronger background and could benefit from exposure to more advanced course material; I use innovative techniques to bring variety to my course delivery methods, motivating students, or helping them with their learning experience; and I use effective and fair assessment techniques, making sure that students are tested several times during a semester, on a wide range of topics, and through various methods such as written tests, hands-on laboratory tests, individual assignments, or group projects; finally, I give importance to being well prepared and organized for the course, as well as for each and every lecture.

Courses Taught:

I have taught the following courses at SFU (Course descriptions can be found at: SFU Calendar)

• ENSC-120: Introduction to electronics laboratory instruments operation & measurement techniques, 2 credit units. (Fall 2017)
• ENSC-150: Introduction to computer design, 3 credit units. (Fall: 2004, 2005, 2006 and Spring:2008,2009,2010,2013)
• ENSC-220: Electric circuits I, 4 credit units. (Spring:2005, Fall: 2006,2007,2009,2012, Summer:2007,2008,2009,2016,2017)
• ENSC-280: Engineering measurement and data analysis, 4 credit units. (Summer: 2015,2016,2017)
• ENSC-327: Communication systems, 4 credit units. (Fall 2000, Fall:2004,2005,2013, Spring:2006,2016, 2017)
• ENSC-380: Linear systems, 3 credit units. (Summer 2007, Spring: 2008,2009,2014)
• ENSC-383: Feedback control systems, 4 credit units. (Fall 2015, Spring 2016)
• ENSC-429: Digital signal processing, 4 credit units. (Summer 2000)
• ENSC-861: Source coding in digital communications (Now: Advanced multimedia compression), 3 credit units. (Summer 2004)