In coming to Allen Community College, Huda Zeitouni is able to parlay two of her passions — a love of teaching, and a love of exploring the world of psychology — into her career.
“It’s very fulfilling,” said Zeitouni, hired this fall as a psychology and humanities instructor at Allen. “I love the experience of being around young minds, of educating them, of relating psychology to their everyday life.
“What’s fascinating about psychology is people might not realize how relative it is to everyday experiences, until they start learning about it,” Zeitouni said.
Zeitouni, 42, came to the United States more than 20 years ago to pursue her college education. Her family is from Syria, but she grew up in Saudi Arabia.
The transition from Saudi Arabia to the United States was a smooth one.
“Culture-wise, Saudi Arabia is an international country, where you’ll meet people from different backgrounds,” she noted. “I was fortunate to have friendly people all around me.”
It was her first college experience in America — she earned an associate degree from Indian Hills Community College in Ottumwa, Iowa — that also instilled Zeitouni’s appreciation for the junior college atmosphere.
“I loved my experience there,” she said. “My professors were so supportive. I don’t know if I had started my education at a big institution, how my journey would have looked.”
Zeitouni admits to having given little thought about a career in education as a child — “Twenty-year-old me never thought I’d be a teacher,” she laughed — but she soon fell in love with the classroom experience.
“When I started, all I wanted to do was earn a bachelor’s degree,” she said. “After getting my bachelor’s, I thought, ‘OK, let’s go for a master’s.’ Then it was ‘OK, let’s go for a PhD.’”
Zeitouni earned her bachelor’s in psychology at the University of Wisconsin; a master’s at the University of Alabama, and her doctorate in philosophy at the University of Kansas.
“Studying psychology was very interesting to me,” she said. “The more I learned, I found myself wanting to learn more.”
Zeitouni’s education included shadowing professional psychologists to determine if she’d consider a career as a psychologist.
“I like the idea of teaching more than practicing,” she concluded.
Part of her studies included exploring optimum environments in which students can prosper, “so they feel like they belong,” Zeitouni said.
