Technology is changing, and with new developments in the field of software and artificial intelligence, it’s important for every student, and every school teaching those students, to stay on the cutting edge. Luckily for Centennial College, we have an expert on just that subject.
Mayy Habayeb is a veteran of the world of big banks and finance. After getting a Master’s degree in Jordan, she moved to Canada, moved into teaching, and currently works as "Centennial College’s Software Engineering - Artificial Intelligence Program Coordinator.". Here’s how she got here, the experience she brings, and how she keeps us on the forefront of technology.
Yesterday’s Business turns into Today’s Technology.
"I started working when I graduated with my electrical engineering degree in computer design back in 1989," Mayy says. "I started off as a hardware engineer, then a software engineer and communications engineer in the banking industry. I spent nine years in the IT department moving around different systems." In 1999, Mayy would join a project to re-engineer some of the bank’s software, which would lead her into also working with their business and operations processes, and then into management.
"The bank was operating in 30 countries," she says. "So, I had the opportunity to visit a lot of countries and learn things." That international experience would lead her to move to Canada, after 20 years of her work, to further her education. One Project Management Professional Certification, and one Master’s degree in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering later, she’d find herself getting into machine learning and artificial intelligence, as well as going into teaching, eventually coming to Centennial College to do so.
"My thesis was in machine learning and data analytics," she says about how her new education helped her get started teaching at Centennial. When the time came to introduce AI in the Software engineering Program, she developed five of the courses, and that was the stepping-on point into artificial intelligence.
Bringing Today’s Technology to the Classroom
Mayy is now a full-time professor at Centennial College, and keeps her tech programs on the cutting edge, with one of her biggest achievements being the participation in the development of a new program around artificial intelligence. Since she started delivering the program, she’s also been promoted to coordinator of artificial intelligence.
"Most of my teaching is in software engineering, technology, artificial intelligence," Mayy says. "The other role that I do is the coordinator for the artificial intelligence program. I also organized the Program Advisory Committee (PAC), made up of people from the industry, and participate with external auditors for program accreditations." She does all that (and more) in addition to teaching. Her long career in software engineering technology lets her pass practical experience on to those students, in the form of her own life experiences.
"I do actually bring examples from what I did, and say, how do we look at this scenario?" she says.
"During my master's, I was involved in a project at Blackberry," she adds as an example, "And that was to build a Recommender system. Some of the ‘Use Cases’ that I worked on in that project, I bring them in to my classroom." She also acknowledges the need to keep her programs up to date, which she’s constantly doing.
"Every day, things are changing so fast," she says. "I teach a course. The next time I teach it, I have to update the course content a little bit because things have changed – like in my NLP course, I just added a new week on large language models."
Going beyond the Desktop.
When she’s not teaching, Mayy makes sure her students get involved in the wider technology field.
"I encourage them to participate in hackathons and competitions," she says. "Last year, there was a STEM activity for the Inter-University 2023 AI and Big Data Hackathon. So, I put the word out there, and I had two sections of students, 10 teams that went in and participated. I mentored one of those teams, and they ended up winning three positions in the top 10."
"There are events that our department does with high schools in Scarborough," Mayy says, for more examples. "Sometimes, we get involved in providing workshops for high school students, like teaching them how to program a game in Python. We also had the school organize girl's events, and a lot of high school students showed up. I'm also a mentor for the Empower Tech Women student club. I've been working with students in that club to organize events, including one at the end of last year with Google, participants ended up earning a certificate badge in cloud essentials."
And beyond Centennial College, she takes part in external tech events, again, in the name of keeping things up-to-date.
"Outside, I participate in various events," she says. "I went to a Women in IT event recently, just to see what's happening out there, especially with startups. I was invited recently by Women in AI Canada, because they had a big hackathon going on. As a volunteer to speak with all the hackathon participants, I give them a session on generative AI, the risks and benefits of it, and the technology behind it. So, I try to help as much as possible. I also participated as a panelist at the "Google Devfest 2023" in Toronto."
Teaching, like software, can be updated.
Mayy seeks to keep herself updated not just on the latest and technology and what's happening in the field, but on the latest teaching practices that can help her learn how to deliver the course in a better way. She has a really specific method for her teaching, too, something she was already doing before discovering it had a name.
"I seek to apply what we call Kolb’s Four Stages of Learning in every course," she says. "So, I try to incorporate a firm theoretical base, followed by real life examples. And that's what I was referring to when I was talking about social media, or anything from my background on BlackBerry or in banking, practical hands-on experience where I show them the code, execute the code, explain the code, and then ask them to do something new to the code."
When comparing teaching to her former tech work, she considers the rewards and incentives to be different, but equally fulfilling.
"I enjoy dealing with people a lot. This job enables me to interact with very intelligent students that come from various backgrounds, and I enjoy that."
"Time, to me, passes very quick when I'm in the classroom," she adds. "Sometimes I have a lecture for three hours, and it goes just like that."
"What makes me happy is when I reach a point where students tell me, 'miss, this is interesting'," she says. "That statement by itself makes me feel that I've delivered something to them."