Higher Education
I cannot resist the urge to quote a maxim by Friedrich Nietzsche :
“ What does your conscience say? – You must become who you are. That is the hardest thing there is, in your life ”.
It was not at all hard for me. Quite the contrary. It is true that I found it hard to leave the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, but when my husband was transferred as wali (prefect) to Sidi Bel Abbès in the west of Algeria — oh! How happy I was to meet my students who came to me in their youth, with their wild desire to learn.
The hardest thing, I think, is accepting what life offers us. The hardest thing is the acceptance of oneself, of this present that is the most beautiful gift of our life.
When I had been lost in the desert, in the most terrible of my moments of fear and despair, I dozed off, and on waking, opening my eyes, I saw coming towards me the chariots of the Garamantes painted on the walls of the rock beneath which I had taken shelter. Was it not this that inspired me to write “ Emeraude ”?
So I was transferred to Djilali Liabés University in Sidi Bel Abbés as a simple assistant. The module entrusted to me was that of “ Electrical and electronic measurements ” for third-year engineering students at the electronics institute. From the very first day, I loved my students. I had established a family relationship with them, presenting myself as a mother and not as the professor looking down on “learners”. It was Yemma, my mother, who had taught me this attitude, which became familiar to me. She would say to me:
“When you speak with anyone, never look down on them. Bend your knee, my daughter, and, eyes in eyes, raise your gaze gradually in harmony with theirs to make them understand the thought you wish to convey.”
The thought I wished to convey to my students was this world of knowledge built on my experience. The field had trained me with the problems I had to solve while clearing faults in telecommunications and this notion of measurement that had been instilled in me from my earliest years…
How could one not give oneself entirely to this teaching, which is the bedrock of knowledge.
My courses always began with the epistemology of measurement: How did this idea come to Man ? What was the first measuring instrument ?
But above all, on one of the transparencies I projected on the overhead projector was the notion of equilibrium.
For the measuring instruments on the syllabus at the time were designed on the principle that measurement comes, before all else, from equilibrium.
Sourate Er-Rahman The more I deepened my research into the world of measurement that was coming to me, the more I felt an indescribable force carrying me towards my students, eager for the knowledge I passed on to them.
“Man is the measure of all things: of those that are, that they are; of those that are not, that they are not“ said Plato.
To capture and study a phenomenon and then evaluate it experimentally in order to assign it a physical magnitude is a long story that has marked the whole history of mankind.
From the theoretical lecture, to the tutorials and the practical work, the story I told them governing a measuring instrument was there, always there, omnipresent.
From the surveyor’s rope that the scribes used in the time of the pharaohs to measure the cultivated areas and account for the harvest for taxation, to the simple graduated ruler and the most complex devices, the magnitude assigned requires the knowledge of physical laws, processing the impulses coming from one or several sensors. How to explain this to them in a simple and appealing way ?
It was by approaching the system of measurement standards that I approached the frame of reference. Can one be what we are without a frame of reference? It was the same for the design of a measuring instrument.
From the measurement of length to that of weight, of time, of electric current, I defined the MKSA system (Metres, Kilogram, Seconds, Amperes) by telling my story of the zero point in Algeria… That of my birth. The story of the neighbourhood of my childhood: the Colonne Voirol.
This was an occasion to invite my students to enter the world of knowledge in a practical way, by telling them the story of the neighbourhood of my childhood, which is the zero point of all distances in Algeria. Sidi Bel Abbes is 434.51 km from the Colonne Voirol. They understood the frame of reference, and from there I continued the story of the standards of measurement.
I taught this module for years, and never did I have so much fun with my students in all the universities I passed through.
Later, after the defence of my magister, I taught modules such as “Waves and vibrations”, yet another world that opened up to me, which I took pleasure in beginning with a riddle in my first lesson. A riddle that Hubert Reeves had inspired in me: “Behind everything that changes, there is one single thing that does not change” — what is it?
I would leave them whole days to think, and there were always bursts of joy, from Oran, to Bab Ezzouar, to Laghouat, to Sidi Bel Abbés, in all the universities through which I passed; I adored my students who brought me an intense joy, that of being understood.
But this happiness too was fleeting; I had to leave this scientific world as well as my doctoral research. A few months before my defence, I had to leave everything.
The status of a woman, an intellectual and, moreover, the wife of a senior official forced me to flee my country in the 90s. Faced with this mass violence borne by a merciless fundamentalism, I left for Tunisia, abandoning my family, with my diplomas as my only baggage and my daughter with me.
University diploma University diplomas and certificates
PRINCIPAL WORKS IN HIGHER EDUCATION
Design and production of lecture notes on the modules taught : ‘’Semiconductor technology’’, ‘’Electrical and electronic measurements’’, ‘’Waves and vibrations’’ , “General electricity’’ .
- Development of teaching tools : Practical Work and Tutorial booklets. Development of courseware, notably in the teaching of microelectronics, etc.…
- Supervision of 07 engineering projects, instrumentation option, and 05, automation and control option.
- Principal assignment at USTHB University – Bab Ezzouar in Algiers : in charge of supervising all the final-year projects of the engineering cycle, Instrumentation option – Electronics Institute.
- Organisation of and participation in several scientific events.
ORGANISATION AND PARTICIPATION IN SEMINARS:
Seminar on the Didactics of Science in June 1993 at Djillali Liabès University in Sidi Bel Abbès.
- Subject of the paper : “Computing, a tool for teaching ”
International meeting on materials science in April 1993 in Tlemcen.
- Subject of the paper : “Effect of hydrostatic compression on III-V binary compounds ”
Seminar on microelectronics at USTHB – (University – Algiers) in June 1992.
- Subject of the paper : “ covalency and ionicity ”
National seminar on the Didactics of Science at the University of Sidi-Bel Abbès in June 1992.
- Subject of the paper : “The harmony of science, its perception and its communication ”.
Seminar on materials science at the University of Sidi Bel Abbès.
- Subject of the paper :“The Hall effect in four acts ”.
International meeting on electronic components and systems in November 1991 in Sidi Bel Abbès.
- Production of posters.