If you are in Civil or Environmental Engineering, the chances are pretty high that you have had, or will have, Professor Rania Al-Hammoud. Successfully overcoming many challenges as a woman in engineering in Lebanon during her bachelor’s studies and in industry, Professor Al-Hammoud immigrated to Canada in 2003 with her family, after which she completed her Masters and PhD at the University of Waterloo. She has been teaching at the university since 2010, spreading her knowledge and showcasing her passion for teaching to countless students.
For this last issue of the Spring 2016 term, the Iron Warrior had the pleasure of sitting down with this incredible professor and asking her a few questions.
Which courses do you teach?
Oh I’ve taught a lot of courses… I’m currently teaching CivE 105 (Mechanics 2), and in the past I’ve taught CivE 204 (Solid Mechanics 2), CivE 265 (Structures and Properties of Materials), CivE 331 (Advanced Mathematics for Civil Engineers), CivE 400 (Civil Engineering Project 1), CivE 403 (Structural Analysis 2), CivE 415 (Structural Systems), CivE 512 (Rehabilitation of Structures), EnvE 221 (Advanced Calculus) and EnvE 292 (Engineering Economics).
Why did you choose to pursue a career in Engineering?
Actually, it was pure luck. I used to love math a lot when I was in school, and all my math teachers were civil engineers, and they were all the math teachers that I admired in high school and middle school. So I really looked up to them. Also, my father was in the computer engineering field but I was not interested in that area, so I ended up in the civil engineering field.
How did you come to be a professor here at the University of Waterloo?
I did my undergrad at the American University of Beirut (AUB) in Lebanon. Then I worked for five years with a company called Hilti as a field engineer, so I used to do some design and construction work. The company also had a research centre in Liechtenstein that I was working closely with. I was able to get a grant from them and I started working with a professor from AUB, and that’s how I got excited about doing research and excited about pursuing my graduate studies. Fortunately, this coincided with me immigrating to Canada in 2003, where one of the professors here at Waterloo was asking for a graduate student from AUB, and I said I was interested since it was the same research area. So that’s when I applied for my masters here, and after I finished that I completed my PhD here as well. It did take me some time because I had a kid before coming to Waterloo, then I had another child while doing my masters, and then another child while doing my PhD. So I was very busy!
What are your current research interests?
My main research is rehabilitation or repair of reinforced concrete structures. After I finished my PhD I went to the University of Minnesota Duluth where I taught as a professor, and I have graduate students there who are working on the repair of bridges, so that project is still going. What I work on here in addition to that project is I do lots of research in engineering education. I believe in experiential learning, and I am also conducting research in metacognition, which is how to think about your thinking, and how to think critically about problems. So in my classes I try to avoid giving cook book style questions where you just follow a procedure, because that’s not going to help students to become better critical thinkers. Another research I’m interested in is resilience, which is another aspect of engineering education, which is how to behave towards failure.
What was the biggest thing you learned as an undergraduate student?
I think my experience as an undergraduate student makes me relate very much to what students face in their undergraduate career. Everybody here was at the top of their class in high school, same as I was, but things are not the same when you come here. I think the biggest thing I had to learn was what used to work in high school might not work for everyone in university, and that was the case for me. For example in high school they would give you five problems for an assignment from the textbook, and I would do the whole 50 because I had the time. In university, professors give you five questions because you only have time to do the five. So I would spend time trying to do those 50 questions and I would fall behind. So I learned a lot about having to change my thinking skills, my learning skills and habits. I think now that’s where I try to help the students the most, because I can see it, I see what they go through, and I went through it too, everybody goes through it.
Do you have any advice for your students?
I would have lots of advice to give to my students. First of all, I would say not to let any failure devastate you. Take it as a learning experience and see how you can improve on it. Because we all fail, I failed so many things in my life and if somebody tells you they didn’t, they are hiding something. So don’t just start thinking I’m going to fail because of this, think about that you are here to learn rather than to get grades and if you do think that way, you are going to do a lot better unintentionally. Because honestly, if you graduate with a 75% or with a 95%, a year afterwards it’s really not going to matter. It’s what you’ve learned, and the skills you’ve gained that really matter the most.
I would also say to talk to your professors. All of us are human beings here, so make sure you to talk to them, express a concern if you have a concern, don’t leave any question unanswered. I don’t judge my students, no matter what they ask, and they should not judge themselves and their classmates. No matter what question it is, I try to make my students feel good about asking that question. Because nobody is perfect. I’m not perfect, and none of us here are perfect. If you think otherwise, then that is something that you have a misconception about.
What is your favourite part about being in teaching?
My favourite part is my interaction with the students. When I’m teaching about a topic, I like it when I’m explaining difficult concepts and then suddenly I see that brightness in their eyes that they got it, and it really makes me happy. I also like that the students think I’m approachable, since my office hours are always full. Students always come to meet me with technical questions so that allows me to be able to help them. So I would say the highlight is when I see that I was able to make a difference in those students. I have a son who is high school right now, and I think of every student as I think of him or my other children, in the sense that I try to help my students in a way that I hope next time one professor can help my son.
What part of teaching do you find the most challenging?
The most challenging thing is getting students to realize that I’m doing all of this for their sakes. When I write a quiz, it takes me about 10 hours to do so because I want to make sure it helps them to develop their critical thinking. So that’s what I keep in mind, and its challenging when you see that they feel it was not right for them, or that it was unfair. That perspective, that’s when I struggle to figure out how to get them to see that I’m really doing this for their best interests. They are the number one in my mind when I’m developing anything. I’m completely with them, not against them.
What is your teaching philosophy?
I believe in interactive methods of teaching so I use a lot of different techniques in my classroom. I use online discussion forums, online videos and modules, clickers, even scratch cards. For example, after my students complete a quiz, they do the same quiz again but now I’ve transferred the questions into multiple choice. So they work in a group and answer using scratch cards. Underneath the right answer there is a star so they know if they did it right or not. They get five points if they get it right the first time, 3 points if they take two tries, 1 point on the third, and 0 for the fourth and fifth. So this method helps to emphasize concepts and promote deep learning, and students can learn where they went wrong and how to fix it. Whereas usually if you get a quiz back after a week you forget what you did and it’s not helpful anymore. Doing the group quizzes after every single quiz is why it takes up to 10 hours for me to prepare them, because you have to make sure you have answers that will make sense and force the students to think. Clicker questions take time too because you need to come up with answers that will trigger those discussions. But the students are worth it.
Another technique I’ve incorporated, based on a suggestion from another professor, is horizontal integration. So the 2A students take five courses, and out of those five, four of those have one single project that involves topics from all these four courses, and my course is one of them. Students tend to learn math alone, statics alone, but for me it’s very important for the students to know how all these elements fit, because we tend not to emphasize this until fourth year projects, which is too late in my opinion.
What are your hobbies?
I like to do a lot of stuff for fun. I do folk dancing, which is something I don’t think my students know. I teach and perform folk dancing, and my group performs in the Kitchener-Waterloo multicultural festival every year. I also love mountain biking and basketball, which is my favourite sport, although there’s not many opportunities to play here. I play soccer, although I’m not very good but I love playing it. I love hockey, I love a lot of stuff. I’m very much into sports. I think every one of my days is very full in terms of extracurricular activities. And my family keeps me very busy, so I try to take them to the activities with me. For example, we all folk dance together as a family.
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