Did you know that some of Alpha’s staff are also university professors? Mahsa Hedayati, PhD, PE, Geotechnical Engineer in Fort Worth and Yasser Abdelhamid, PhD, Geotechnical Project Manager in Dallas have both taught at their alma maters. Here’s a little about Mahsa and Yasser:
Mahsa earned her PhD in Geotechnical Engineering from The University of Texas at Arlington and since 2015, has taught one course per semester. Her classes include geotechnical aspects of landfill design and computational geotechnics. Her favorite aspect of teaching is “…at the end, I see how engaged my students are. They’ve gone from being completely remote to the subject to someone who knows everything about it”.
Yasser earned his PhD in Civil Engineering from Southern Methodist University and taught Soil Mechanics fall semester 2016. Yasser also taught for 9 years throughout his Masters and PhD. During that time, he learned students had a tendency to focus on memorization to pass exams. To combat that trend, Yasser started to challenge his students, turning a lecture-based class into an interactive one, “it takes more time and effort of course, but it’s worth it because it makes students think vs. memorize”. Although Yasser is not teaching this semester, he is not quite ready to retire the red pen.
Where It All Begins 83 