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‘Be the Best They Can Be’
THEY {‘BE THE BEST CAN BE’
McEniry Award winner Hala ElAarag, PhD, is changing the lives of her computer science students with her own special code.
BY CORY LANCASTER
Professor Hala ElAarag, PhD
CAN BE’}
Madison Gipson had never written computer code when she changed her major to computer science after her first semester at Stetson.
Once she declared a new major, she was assigned a new faculty adviser, Computer Science
Professor Hala ElAarag, PhD. And that assignment, as she would later say, would have a “huge” impact on her college experience and professional development.
“I felt very out of my element, and having Dr. ElAarag as my faculty adviser was such a blessing,” says Gipson ’20, who was named an Outstanding Senior in
Computer Science. “She helped welcome me in and encourage me when everything was still very new and overwhelming.”
ElAarag also recommended Gipson get involved in activities outside of the classroom — internships, conferences and research projects — activities that make a résumé stand out in the job market, as ElAarag likes to tell students.
ElAarag: “What really makes me so happy about my job is the connection to the students.”
Gipson took her advice and became active in the Harvard WECode Conference, the largest student-run tech conference for women. She helped to develop an app on campus, called StetsonScene, and worked on her own student research. Now a data scientist for NASA, she is pursuing an MBA in data analytics at Stetson.
ElAarag’s dedication to student learning and success were cited in May when she received the 2021 McEniry Award for Excellence in Teaching, considered Stetson’s most prestigious award for faculty.
“What really makes me so happy about my job is the connection to the students,” comments ElAarag, who also received the 2020 Outstanding Engineering Educator Award from the Florida Council of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
“The feeling that I give them is sincere. This is really what I like to do, and they feel it. I want them to be the best they can be.”
PASSION FOR UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH
Ou Zheng graduated with a BS in computer science in 2017 and still trades emails with ElAarag every few months. He is pursuing a doctorate from the University of Central Florida while working at UCF’s Smart & Safe Transportation Lab as a lead software engineer.
“She has had a significant impact on my career side,” Zheng says. “I feel as though her
Ou Zheng ’17
help and advice took my career to new heights. Her experience and excellent advice will always remain with me.”
Christian Micklisch graduated in 2015 and is seeking a doctorate from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He works there as a research assistant in the High Performance Computing Architecture and System Lab, and as a contract application programmer for Mitchell Martin.
“Some of her classes were challenging, but her method of teaching really helped me to be independent academically and Christian Micklisch ’15 professionally,” Micklisch says. “We had co-written some papers, and I’ve always asked her to be my recommendation when applying to universities. She helped me get into the master’s and doctoral program at UNCC.”
ElAarag spends many, many hours guiding students and talking about the importance of skills like critical thinking. She encourages them to ask why things are done a certain way and if they can be done differently. Communications skills are key, too, including the ability to write research articles and make effective oral presentations.
“I tell them you can be the most talented programmer. You’re sitting in a cubicle or now at home doing an excellent job, but if you cannot defend your work and show your work, either in a written format or an oral format, then you will not succeed. You will not go up the ladder,” she explains.
ElAarag has written one book, edited 11 others and written 63 articles for journals and conference proceedings. Many of these articles were co-written with her students.
Her 44-page curriculum vitae lists the accomplishments of numerous students, under headings like “Student Recognition Under My Supervision” and “Supervision of Research Projects.” The student projects have titles such as “An Approach to Wireless Ad Hoc Network Routing Based on the Behavior of Slime Mold Physarum Polycephalum,” which ElAarag presented at an international conference in July.
“I have a passion to do undergraduate research,” ElAarag says. “When the students come in after high school with no knowledge at all about computer science, some of them may think, ‘Oh, I’m good at it because I play games, or I can do a website.’
“But then, you work with them over the years, and after four years you’ll be able to bring them to a level that they can undergo this type of high-level research, and it gets published not in undergraduate venues. It gets published in regular research venues. Some of my students actually, when we send to a journal — maybe Elsevier or SAGE — they address my undergrad as doctor.”
FASCINATED AT AN EARLY AGE
ElAarag credits her mother for inspiring her to become a computer scientist. As a young girl, she remembers her mother working on her doctorate in engineering in Alexandria, Egypt, where Hala was born and raised. In those days, computers used punch cards for data processing, such as statistics and other computations.
“I was like, ‘Oh, these punch cards do a lot. See the result?’ I was really fascinated,” Hala recalls. “At a very young age, I wanted to be a computer scientist. … Maybe the fascination started, I was in elementary school, but I was really decided in middle school.”
Her parents were kind, thoughtful people, and she brings those qualities to her interactions with students. Her father, who was an engineer, has passed away, while her mother remains an engineering professor at Alexandria University. Hala earned her BS and MS in computer science from that same university.
While there, she also met her future husband. And after they both graduated, the two decided to apply to doctoral programs in the United States.
He was accepted at the University of California at Davis and, after earning his PhD in civil engineering, was hired at the University of Central Florida. He is a Pegasus Professor and chair of UCF’s Department of Civil, Environmental and Construction Engineering, as well as team leader at the UCF Smart & Safe Transportation Lab.
Early in their marriage, ElAarag remembers: “I found it very hard to have two parents doing PhDs when we had a child, so I decided to put my family first, stay with my daughter and then my son. I just worked part time at a research lab at UC Davis.”
Once the family relocated to Orlando, she entered the doctoral program at UCF. She graduated in 2001, worked as an adjunct professor at UCF, and was hired the next year as a faculty member at Stetson.
Higher education provides a nice work-family balance, she said. Still, it wasn’t easy, commuting one hour each way from Orlando to Stetson and then shuttling her kids to karate, tennis, soccer, book clubs, science clubs and math clubs.
“When I think back, I don’t know how I did it,” she says with a laugh. “I don’t sleep that much. It’s maybe a gift, but what helps is organization and efficiency. I’m very, very organized and efficient.”
Today, her daughter is an otolaryngology-head and neck surgeon, finishing up her residency at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona. Next year, she will start a fellowship in a combined program at Columbia and Cornell universities. Her son just finished his medical degree and master’s degree in health sciences from Yale University, and has started an ophthalmology residency.
“I had high expectations for them [her children] and that same expectation I have for my students,” ElAarag says.
REPUTATION FOR EXCELLENCE
Each spring, Stetson presents the William Hugh McEniry Award for Excellence in Teaching to a faculty member who has demonstrated excellence in classroom teaching, academic activities outside the classroom, service to students and other accomplishments. The award was established in 1974 by then-Stetson President John E. Johns, PhD, and honors the exemplary leadership and accomplishments of McEniry, a professor of English and dean of the university.
McEniry, for instance, launched a “re-evaluation of the total undergraduate curriculum in the years following World War II. These resulted in the rapid rise of the university in academic stature,” Johns explained in Stetson’s Cupola magazine in November 1974.
“His influence on the academic excellence of Stetson is, perhaps, as great as any single individual’s in the 92-year history of the school,” Johns added in the article, located in the Stetson Digital Archives.
As this year’s winner of the McEniry Award, ElAarag gave the Fall 2021 Convocation address, which was livestreamed to students, faculty and staff in August. In introducing her, Provost Noel Painter, PhD, said she “has demonstrated excellence as a pedagogue, scholar, university contributor and colleague.”
ElAarag told students that the next few years would be some of the best of their lives. They will face challenges and difficulties, and will be pushed to excel.
“I want you to know that we are all here to help you find your passion. We are here to guide you every step of the way,” she said during the address. “We will provide so many opportunities inside and outside the classroom. I encourage you to take them.
“As we transition back to face-to-face learning, we still need to remember that the pandemic is not over yet,” she continued. “We still face challenges, but we will always be there for each other as a Stetson family. We are so pleased to have you, and we want to do all we can to help you obtain a well-rounded liberal arts education.”
For Gipson, the NASA data scientist, ElAarag helped her discover her passion for computer science as an undergraduate, including that suggestion of attending Harvard WECode (Women Engineers Code at Harvard University). The group connects college-aged women in computer science and other STEM fields, and provides workshops and panels with industry experts.
“Because of Dr. ElAarag, I was able to go to this conference on a Stetson-funded scholarship,” Gipson says. “I consider that conference the turning point of my college career. I learned more than I ever thought I would from it, and came back to Stetson inspired and more passionate about my field than I thought I ever could be!”
Not surprisingly, such experiences create lasting bonds between students and the professor. ElAarag tries to gently guide them every step of the way. When she recommends a conference, she will follow up and make sure the student has registered. Before students start their senior year, she asks, “‘OK, do you have your résumé ready? I’ll be very happy to look at it.’
“Sometimes, I get a job announcement,” ElAarag continues. “Employers reach out to me all the time, and I just forward it. And then, a week later someone says, ‘Oh, thank you. I got the job.’ It took me 30 seconds, and I changed one person’s life. It’s just a very nice feeling that you are impacting those students’ life in a good way, and they feel that they have me not until they graduate, but it’s a lifelong relationship.”
