Third in a series
Re “How Abu-Ghazaleh Made a Giant Transition”
[img]1341|left|Mr. Abu-Ghazaleh||no_popup[/img]Arriving in the classroom in the 1980s at the dawn of the swiftly changing computer age, if Nabil S. Abu-Ghazaleh had remained engaged in technology, the original love of his educational life, he might have become world-famous by now as he approaches his middle years.
Instead, his acclaim is regional and academic as he completes the seventh month of his tenure as President of West Los Angeles College.
The changeover in emphases within him was subtle.
“Those were heady times,” Mr. Abu-Ghazaleh said the other day as he looked back 20 years and more. “I thought of it as great fun and not work. Education was not competing for my attention. I really fell into it. As an engineer who had some computer background for my Master’s, doing structural analysis, software development, it put me in a natural place to teach other engineers how to use computers.
“The notion of teaching then developed. I had (served as a teacher’s aide) in lab classes as a graduate student. Great fun but not work.
“Then when I did it in a professional environment, I observed that I enjoyed the teaching aspect more than the technology aspect.
“Teaching in a technical area in the late ‘80s and into the ‘90s was truly enjoyable – that is what triggered my interest in academics. The technology was changing so rapidly that I claim in 10 years in the classroom, I never taught the same course twice.
“Software would change as we were teaching. I would give the students a final exam that involves looking up how the new functionality works and they needed to learn how to do it because that was what the work was going to be.
“I taught a variety of classes, both computer-aided design and animation classes. I started as a drafting instructor at Pasadena City College, and I spent 10 years in the classroom there. It was fun.”
When Mr. Abu-Ghazaleh was asked if a decade of teaching was sufficient, he quickly said no. “No amount of time is enough in the classroom,” he said. “My heart still hearkens to that experience.
“Many of my colleagues who are in the classroom would tell you that no matter how demanding, how challenging, how tiring the job gets, it’s only tiring because people put their heart and soul into it.
“You really feel a spiritual connection with the work you are doing because you are building people.”
(To be continued)
