“We need to forge more bridges between university life and the extant needs of the workforce. Both cannot function as two insular realms. All we need is to redress the imbalances between both.”
Jaidaa Gawad Hamada
INTERVIEWER: MAHMOUD MANSI
About the Interviewee: Dr. Jaidaa Gawad is well-know by being one of the celebrity teachers in the English Department, Faculty of Arts. She is dedicated to her mission as a teacher, and dedicated to her students. She finds time for everyone. Dr. Jaidaa has been a sports fan since forever, and if you are a Sporting Club member you would always see her jogging and well-focused on this passion. Recently she took her sports life into a higher level and became a member at Triple F, and also won a first prize award with Alex Runners. Her role-model is her great mother Dr. Lobna Mehanna. Dr. Jaidaa is a very good example of work/life balance, and she is still running forward towards newer dreams.
THE INTERVIEW
1- HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: Dr. Jaidaa, as a university staff member you always had the chance to work in different areas, and as a person you are gifted by a lot of other talents, yet you sincerely focused on teaching your whole career. What is your reason?
Jaidaa Gawad Hamada: I have always been passionate about teaching, hailing it as more of a mission than a profession. Stepping into the classroom is akin to my being ushered into a realm that is far removed from the humdrum of this life. I do love my students and I feel I am bound to them by a sense of duty; a duty which I unflinchingly try to perform to the best of my abilities. I find it really ennobling to be allowed to disseminate knowledge or impart any beneficial experiences to others. It means the world to me to be able to make the minutest of positive difference in even a single student’s life. What is even more rewarding for me is that I teach something I have always loved and wanted to study; that is, literature.
2- HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: What was your dream job when you were a child? And why?
Jaidaa Gawad Hamada: Strange as it may sound, I have never entertained hopes of becoming a university professor. Actually, I have never had a “dream job”, but what had always lingered on my mind was that I wanted to study literature. I would rather then call it a “dream career”; one that hinged on incessantly reading all books under the sun. I have always wanted, and I still do want, to probe deeper and deeper into the mesmerizing realm of literature. Joining the English Department at the Faculty of Arts had always been my aim. Despite the very high grade I had obtained in my final year of secondary education (General Secondary Certificate), 102% with the added grades of two high-level courses, I never deviated from the path I had always wanted to pursue. Additionally, I have always been fascinated by psychology. Had I not been appointed at the English Department when I first graduated from college, I would have definitely opted for studying psychology. That I have not undertaken this step until now does not mean I have altogether given up on my dream—never! I am just waiting for an apt time to indulge my academic fancies.
3- HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: From your point of view, what are the personal and technical qualifications of a professional university teacher?
Jaidaa Gawad Hamada: In my viewpoint, you can be a most astounding scholar but a flop as a teacher. Being one does not necessarily entail the other. Although there is no one-and- only manual for becoming a good teacher, nor is there any prescribed formula to become one, I can succinctly describe it as an amalgam of innate talent; coupled with unfaltering enthusiasm; enhanced by practice and perseverance; embellished with ceaseless updating and incessantly underlain with passion. Passion—the secret word for success in whatever one sets out to do in life, or whatever career one embarks on.
4- HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: In business there is a term called CRM – Customer Relationship Management – and it refers to maintain a lifetime relationship with the customer. You are actually implementing this and keeping your relation with graduates still strong. How do you maintain this relationship and does it add a benefit to your work?
Jaidaa Gawad Hamada: I believe it all goes back to the same sense of duty that I feel towards my students, and the same formula of setting my heart on whatever I am undertaking in life. Once again, passion pops up as the secret word for a most rewarding and enduring CRM. Do parents sever their ties with their off-springs when the latter travel or get married? My relationship with my students works along similar lines. In fact, many a time does it become even more consolidated after their graduation, since we are no longer restricted by a teacher-student relationship with all its strictures and formalities. Let me point out that being friendly with my students is not mutually exclusive of the respect they unswervingly show to me. You can be loved and simultaneously respected. You can be friendly, professional and academic all at once. You can be looked up to without your being vain or self-conceited. Definitely, the rapport I share with my students and the cemented ties we keep after their graduation wield a most empowering impact on my work. Suffice it to say that is a constant emblem of the conviction that hard work always pays off.
5- HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: If you were not destined to be a teacher, what other career would you have chosen? Why?
Jaidaa Gawad Hamada: I would have spent my entire life reading and researching. I would have also stridden into the luring realm of psychology.
6– HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: What are the common challenges that university teachers face? And can you share with us a real challenge you faced at your work and how did you overcome it as a case-study?
Jaidaa Gawad Hamada: I believe the major hurdle we are facing is the ever-increasing number of students who enroll each year in different faculties with neither commensurate resources, nor adequate places to accommodate them. As a result, the students are left adrift. Some students also join faculties they are not primarily interested in either because their grades in the General Secondary Certificate qualified them for particular fields, or because of some age-old traditions that exalt certain fields or careers at the expense of downgrading some others. In our department we have thankfully managed to mitigate the repercussions of this problem by resorting to an entrance exam that allows us to admit into the department only those who are attuned to studying literature. Besides, some universities are lagging far behind in their being endowed with technological facilities, and according cannot catch up with the most recent educational breakthroughs. A most obstructive challenge that impedes any attempt at effecting progress is the barrage of bureaucratic and needless strictures we have to abide by for no obvious reason! You can spend a very long time working on very beneficial plans for improvement only to be balked at the end by some nightmarish regulations that not only thwart your dreams, but even worse demoralize you. The latter is a real challenge that I perpetually face, and to be honest not every time I succeed in overcoming it. Nonetheless, one should try one’s best against all odds.
7- HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: You have been practicing sports for years, you won an award with Alex Runners, you are a member of Triple F, and you recently started practicing yoga. Would all these challenges and efforts help you be a better teacher?
Jaidaa Gawad Hamada: Absolutely! Not only a better teacher, but also a better person physically, mentally spiritually and psychologically. Countless are the rewards of exercising, not just for the sake of weight management and staying in good shape, but also as a lifestyle. Regular physical activity stimulates various brain chemicals that serve as inherent mood enhancers. You will also feel better about your appearance, which will inevitably boost your confidence and improve your self-esteem. Exercise and physical activity deliver oxygen and nutrients to the body tissues that allow the cardiovascular system to function more efficiently. When your heart and lungs work more efficiently, you have more energy to grapple with your daily chores and challenges. Needless to say how regular physical activity can help manage a wide range of health problems. What is really so rewarding for me is that many of my students have lately taken to working out on my account.
8- HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: Let’s assume that there will be a new faculty of arts in Alexandria, and you are asked to be the Dean, and you are given full authority in structuring the faculty before it is even launched, how is it going to be like?
Jaidaa Gawad Hamada: To begin with, allow me to make it clear that I am far from being into administrative/managerial positions. Being a manager, a director or a dean, as you suggest, has never been luring for me in any way. I do not see it as my forte, not because of scarcity of leadership skills, but because I would rather pursue academic goals. However, if I am “coerced” into holding such a job, I believe I will be encountering a most daunting and arduous undertaking. To begin with, I will admit students who are really keen on learning in general, and studying humanities in particular. Education is indispensable to every human being; it is a basic human right. Yet, it is really a pity that it is readily made accessible to some who are not keen on learning; hence wasting the country’s resources. An entrance exam will be imperative. One thing this new faculty will be absolved of is all needless paperwork. Expectedly, all traces of bureaucracy will be eradicated. Decentralizing the management system will also be a prime concern of mine. Extra-curricular activities will be implemented as an integral aspect of the system. A most updated online library with the most recent resources will be readily available to the students; one that functions according to a system that makes life easier for the student. The system of education itself will be pivoted on encouraging research on the students’ part. Technological facilities will be at the students’ disposal. In a nutshell, I would strive with all the force of my being to engender a congenial milieu that renders education a most gratifying endeavor rather than a burdensome Herculean toil. I would not spare to bring to the world a generation of hardy and ambitious students. Today’s students are tomorrow’s business leaders, politicians, ministers, entrepreneurs, scientists, engineers, teachers and other professionals. I believe we need to forge more bridges between university life and the extant needs of the workforce. Both cannot function as two insular realms. All we need is to redress the imbalances between both.
9- HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: What’s your advice to the students fresh graduates of Faculty of Arts who want to establish a professional career?
Jaidaa Gawad Hamada: Simply stated: Whatever you do, do it with passion, perseverance and conscience.
HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: Thank you so much Dr. Jaidaa for being an awesome teacher, an inspiration and role-model to thousands, and thank you for this interview.
