Elsayed Elsayed Wagih - Teaching Responsibilities

Teaching Responsibilities

Teaching has been Wagih's career since 1970, when he was permanently appointed as an instructor in the Department of Plant Pathology, College of Agriculture, University of Alexandria. He was responsible for teaching and supervising laboratory classes in Plant Pathology including: General Botany (Morphology, and Anatomy), Advanced Plant Anatomy, Plant Taxonomy, Plant Physiology, Bacterial Plant Diseases, Mycology, Fungal Diseases of Plants and General Plant Pathology.

Following obtaining his M. Sc. degree in Bacteriology in 1975, he was appointed as an Assistant Lecturer in the same department with the same previously mentioned responsibilities until he left the department for Great Britain to study for the Ph.D. degree. In 1979, he worked as an Assistant Lecturer in the Department of what is presently known as 'Department of Pure and Applied Biology', Imperial College of Science Technology and Medicine, University of London. He was responsible for teaching and supervising the practical part of an undergraduate course on 'Biology of Virus Diseases' taught by R.H.A. Coutts.

Upon his return from the United Kingdom, he was appointed in 1982 a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in the Department of Plant Pathology, College of Agriculture, University of Alexandria and asked by the Head of the department to take the responsibility for teaching courses dealing with the molecular aspect of Plant Pathology. He ran and organised, in collaboration with others, three courses, a third year course on 'Phytomedicine' (Plant Pathology), a fourth year course on 'viral diseases' whose practical component was also run and organised by him and a post-graduate course on 'Origin of Variation and Development of Strains In Plant Pathogens', in which he included a great deal of genetic engineering as an unusual (man-made) source of variation. He was also involved in teaching bacteriology and plant physiology.

Over the period from 1988 to 1993, he had the chance to be actively involved as a privately contracted Professor in teaching General Biology and Biochemistry for the Medical Students in Saudi Arabia.

From March 1987, when he was promoted to Associate Professorship, to May 1992, when he became a full professor and onwards, he became in charge of developing and teaching courses taught in the department and dealing with Biotechnology and its application in the field of Plant Pathology with particular emphasis on Genetic Engineering. During this period he was also appointed as a vice director of research of the Biotechnology Centre at the college.

In 2004, and based on his extensive experience in the field of Modern Biotechnology, the College Council elected him to be the Professor in charge of designing (planning and preparing) and teaching a course on 'Biotechnology And Its Applications To Agriculture' with its two components, the theoretical and the practical components for the 3rd year undergraduate students of the whole college. The Council approved his book on 'Biotechnology and its applications to Agriculture' as the accredited reference for the course. The task involved setting the syllabus for both the theoretical and practical elements of the course. He was also given the same responsibilities for a corresponding course taught in English in the parallel English Programme study adopted by the college.

He was invited by the department of Plant Pathology to design and set out the syllabus for an advanced course on "Biotechnology and Plant Pathology" with its two elements, theory and practical, to be taught as a mandatory course within the credit hour system newly adopted by the college as stated by the new college's by-law to post-graduate students registering for M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees. He has been in charge of teaching the theoretical and the practical parts of the course and supervising its laboratory work starting from the Academic year 2008/2009.

This long period of extensive experiences in tertiary education which involved teaching various subjects and preparing a wide range of teaching materials for all subjects taught lead to better understanding of the nature of a diverse range of students. Having gone through these experiences, he learned effective communication and transfer of information and building up of knowledge to a large mass of students both from Egypt and from other Arabic and African countries pursuing their study in Egypt.