My ultimate purpose as educator is to model minds and characters as dedicated contributors to our world through the engineering profession rather than simply ‘reach brains’ through dry scientific evidence. Through personal example and continuous active mentoring I accommodate various learning styles and create a classroom climate fostering love for knowledge and discovery through inquiry that stimulates creativity while it challenges, shifts and expands perspectives. I use imagery and metaphors (which come handy for me as accomplished poet) as effective tools to share my vast professional experiences while conveying a productive and impacting message to the audience – at my classes as well as in my constant speaking engagements around the world. In my contribution to the interdisciplinary course University 400: ‘Metaphors that Matter’ I envisioned my work as educator to be that of a guide taking the group (students) on an adventure trip in unknown terrain. On one side the guide’s torch enlightens and reveals hidden treasures and mysteries hard to discover by the students, thus making the trip a marvelous and enriching experience while inspiring them to take light from guide’s torch to contribute to the enhancement of the common discovery while sharing their findings with the others. The highest reward for me is when students mirror and amplify guide’s skills through their own gifts and talents to embark on an even more adventurous journey on their own. Many graduate and undergraduate students that I taught have joined my research team and are continuing the journey – leading me through the wonders of their own discoveries.
My teaching career is characterized by a broad international experience and very wide spectra of courses not only taught but as well designed and introduced by me in several Universities curricula in Europe and Canada (please refer to the Appendix for details). The common denominator within this variety of courses is that they all address aspects related to the development of Information Communication Technologies (ICT) that currently drive the ‘ICT Revolutions’ shaping our eSociety in all its dimensions: eHealth, eCommerce eLearning, eBanking, eEnterprise, eWar/ePeacekeeping etc - including the emerging related ‘guardian’ areas of privacy security and trust. My broad expertise in the design and development of high-end Networked Distributed Intelligent Systems brings handy related courses that transcend the borders of single disciplines into innovative conceptual findings, evolving new areas and disciplines to address the spiral of continuous ICT-driven transformations (bio-inspired networking, ubiquitous computing and ambient intelligence, global enterprise related information systems, intelligent manufacturing, adaptive risk management and complex dynamical systems) at the graduate level. My background in systems, software and process engineering and computational intelligence is most suitable for related undergraduate courses ranging from software architectures to logic circuit design and from linear systems theory to systems diagnostics and artificial intelligence/multi-agent systems). The international perspective and interdisciplinary approach defining my research and teaching have enabled me to develop team-teaching approaches that integrate diverse expertise to create corss- inter- and trans-disciplinary courses building on the strength of several lecturers from various faculties and universities – wherever the most appropriate expertise is available (the last one, CNST 443: Canadian Science Policy and Technology Development, team taught with professors from Civil Engineering and Communication and Culture).