Aziza Ellozy’s Lifelong Mission to Enhance AUC Education

By: Leila Abdellatif
@leilayasser101

It’s rather difficult to be a student or faculty member at AUC and not to have heard of Aziza Ellozy.

For those who have worked with her, Professor of Practice and Associate Provost for Transformative Learning and Teaching Ellozy is on a mission to revolutionize higher education.

An AUC alumna who began her career as a professor of Organic Chemistry and Natural Sciences in the United States, Ellozy believes that her college years greatly shaped her personality and general interests, evolving both personally and educationally in the liberal arts system.

Fueled with a desire to learn and impart what she learns to younger generations, she found that liberal arts education was the most effective approach to providing students a comprehensive learning experience.

Making education more innovative, flexible, and impactful, she believes, is the best way to reach and stimulate students.

“I love teaching, I love being with students – I’m a lifelong learner,” Ellozy told The Caravan.

And that lifelong quest has helped her approach education with a more holistic approach – with keenness to opening minds to different disciplines all at once.

For example, students of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) should be educated in the Social Sciences and Humanities and vice versa. Ellozy pointed out, however, that there is certainly a difference in terms of teaching approaches itself – a canvas with the professor as an artist to deliver.

Before joining AUC in 2002 as the founding director of the Center for Learning and Teaching (CLT), Ellozy lived for 32 years in the US and was a tenured faculty member at Fordham University in New York.

It was during her time as a professor there that Ellozy was first exposed to Blackboard, a technological platform that fascinated her with its flexibility and simplicity. As a professor, she saw the possibilities that technology could create for a better education that is more innovative and expansive.

In this eye-opening moment of becoming aware of the evolving landscape of teaching and learning, Ellozy was invited to take part in Project Kaleidoscope, which focused on improving STEM education, in the United States. The program involved collaborative efforts between faculties of different universities and other educational institutions to transform the educational system in an innovative manner.

“My contribution in the project was great fun, but it also taught me how one can teach differently and reach and engage students differently,” Ellozy said..

Following her time working on Project Kaleidoscope, Ellozy thought of bringing back what she learned to her homeland Egypt, which she said she has always felt connected to wholeheartedly.

“I feel very lucky that I got the opportunity to do what I love here,” said Ellozy of her work at AUC, particularly at the CLT.
The CLT, which Ellozy founded, is responsible for elevating every aspect of the education delivered, from faculty training to evolving models of teaching.

Ellozy was involved in developing the hybrid model of education for AUC during the COVID pandemic. She emphasized the rewarding nature of the project in spite of the challenge of adapting to a remote model of work.

She credited an exceptional team effort for providing AUC with the tools and educative hybrid systems to become a more innovative and forward-thinking scholastic institution than it had been prior to the pandemic.

“There is always room for improving student learning, I think a very important aspect of this and an advantage at AUC is small classes; creating a more personalized education and avoiding the massification of it,” says Ellozy.

Her colleagues describe her as being AUC-centric and having the university’s best interests in her sights while keeping her eye on ensuring that innovation and creativity are alive and well on campus. They say she has inspired them in how she meets adversity with creative, sustainable and small impactful solutions.

“Aziza faces challenges head on and is always pragmatic yet leads with her heart and head at the same time, which is a difficult thing to do,” Hoda Mostafa, current CLT Director and Professor of Practice, told The Caravan.

Mostafa said she had big shoes to fill when she followed in Ellozy’s footsteps at the CLT.

“Her standards for excellence for CLT as a service center to AUC are high and she has bred a sense of ownership and accountability in each and every one of us at CLT,” Mostafa added.

“Building a culture within a dynamic institute of higher education with changing leadership is never an easy task, yet she succeeded in doing so in the 15 years in which she built and led the center.”

It doesn’t seem like Ellozy will slow down any time soon. She is consistently driven by what she called a “natural human curiosity” where education is most importantly about continuous learning and fulfillment.

Education, then, becomes central to building a career and becoming an active citizen in society, highlighting the difference and tension between productivity, which is deeply associated with career building, and learning. Ellozy believes that productivity is a function of the person; it does not necessarily mean that one is more successful than another.

“The most beneficial productivity is one that is reflective,” she said.

Those are certainly words to live by. Mostafa added that she wishes that Ellozy would take more time for herself, which she has done in bits and pieces recently, and to spend time enjoying the successes and also the failures.

“As an academic area under her leadership, we have a lot to celebrate and also much to reflect on, when things are spinning around us so quickly we often forget we need time to reflect,” Mostafa said.

Ellozy explained that she lives by the words of American philosopher and education reformer John Dewey: “If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.” And inspired by Dewey, she stresses that enhancing the AUC learning experience is central to her mission.