Hamed Shamma Hanan Khayal Interview 1

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Interview Transcript



Interviewer: Hanan Khayal
Interviewee: Dr. Hamed Shamma
Date: 12/03/2014
Place: Dr. Hamed Shammas Office
Abdul Latif Jameel Hall
Room 2021
University: The American University in Cairo
Professor: Kim Fox
Date completed: March 15, 2014

Hamed Shamma Hanan Khayal Interview 2
12 March 2014
Persons present: Hanan Khayal
Dr. Hamed Shamma
Hanan: I'm conducting an interview with Dr. Hamed Shamma. Can you please
introduce yourself; tell me your name, title, place of residence, age, and
educational background?
Shamma: My name is Hamed Shamma, I'm a social professor of marketing and B.P.
Endowed Chair. I live in 6th of October. My age is thirty-five years old, and I
have a B.A. and MBA [Masters in Business Administration] from the
American University in Cairo, and a Ph.D. from George Washington
University in Washington D.C.
Hanan: So, knowing that you're an AUC (The American University in Cairo)
graduate, how different was your experience as a student and as a professor?
Shamma: To tell you honestly, the experience was significantly different, you know.
Being a student, you know, I always, you know, looked very highly upon
AUC. The professors were really top-notch professors, and you know I had
the perception that AUC was like an idealistic type of place were everything
was just perfect. But when you come to see things from inside, when I started
as a faculty, No, you realize there are a lot of things that you never saw when
you were a student. So, it tells you that it is always different, you know,
thinking about it, you know, your perspective being a student versus a faculty.
But it tells you how AUC is a very promising place, being a student helped,
you know, build an understanding of the culture of AUC. But I was a student
more than 10-15 years ago, and AUC as university is totally different than
what it was fifteen years ago. So, I think, being a faculty now is something
Hamed Shamma Hanan Khayal Interview 3
that is much more challenging that it used to be. The students even today are
different than what they were 15 years ago. The students are much more
demanding, the students are much more challenging, they really want
something that is always up-to-date and relevant. They always, you know, are
challenging professors, because they always want to get the maximum, which
was not the case when I was a student, you know. I was a student and we just
basically are recipients of information. The moment the professor talks, we all
have to be very silent, and you know things are very different now.
Hanan: So, do you think that studying at AUC gave you more insight or edge over
other professors about the modes of teaching?
Shamma: I think it honestly did. Being a student here, it gave me an understanding about
the culture of AUC. You know, you cannot say that AUC is a representative
university of the typical university in Egypt. Students here are not the typical
students that you get in other places. So, you know, being a student really
helped me a lot. It really helped me a lot about what are the expectations of the
students, what are the students looking for in class, the system also of how
things operate here at AUC. Whether it comes to registration, and advising,
and you know, the library, and stuff like this. So, I was not, I did not feel I
needed some kind of orientation, you know when I came. Always there is a
problem for who, you know, are not here before that it's really very important
for them to have an orientation, and even after the orientation, they really do
not fully understand the culture here at AUC. What is the expectations of
students in class, and how do things operate. So, being here for a long time,
and knowing this really gives me, it was very smooth, you know, when I
came, I know what are the expectations, I know what's going on. So, it made
Hamed Shamma Hanan Khayal Interview 4
things much more easy and much more smooth for me definitely, you know,
when I came to teach as a faculty.
Hanan: So, why did you choose marketing as field of study, and as a field of teaching?
Shamma: The starting point about how I decided on marketing was when I took my first
marketing course as an undergraduate student with Dr. Ibrahim Hegazy. I
remember it was the summer of 1996, and I was still not clear whether to
concentrate in marketing, finance, I was not clear about that. I took the course
in the summer; I just loved the essence of what marketing is all about. The
way he introduced us to marketing was really very nice, because it really, it is
not just something that applies to products and services, we as people, we have
to market ourselves, and stuff like this, and this is how it started. So, it started
with me becoming interested in marketing with the first course that I took here
as an undergraduate at AUC, and then since then Ive been loving it even
more, you know. At my MBA level, I even was exposed to more marketing,
you know, courses and topics with other marketing classes, and then when I
even pursued my Ph.D., I even loved it even more when I started doing more
detailed academic research, you know, in marketing.
Hanan: How is the education at AUC different from getting education abroad?
Shamma: Many people has the perception that the education at AUC is very different
from education elsewhere outside, and being an AUC student, and having
taught at George Washington university, I was teaching at George Washington
for, you know, three years as an instructor where I taught various marketing
courses, and then coming back and teaching back here, I can tell you that
AUC is comparable to any good university elsewhere. In terms of what you
get in class, in terms of what you get out of class, in terms of the entire
Hamed Shamma Hanan Khayal Interview 5
experience what you get is typical to what you would get in any other good,
and above average in the United States or Europe. So, I do not see, you know,
people have the perception that abroad it is much better, you know, and some
people even, you know. There is this perception but when people actually go
abroad and see, they realize really how AUC is a very strong institution, you
know. Just by my undergraduate studies here and my MBA, it gave me a very
strong push when I did my Ph.D. in the U.S. I thought that, you know, I would
be competing with top-notch students from the United States, and maybe my
background is not as strong as they, and I found myself pretty well, you know,
compared to others. So, you know, what you get here is like what you get in
other places and in many cases, even much better. You are very prepared to,
you know, do further studies, you know, and degrees abroad, and you know,
it's comparable to any other place outside.
Hanan: Thank you Dr. Hamed Shamma. Thank you; it's been a pleasure having an
interview with you.
Shamma: Thank you very much, and thank you for your time.