Mohamad H. Fawaz
Teaching

Teaching

I have taught business at college and university level in Canada and Lebanon, in English and Arabic, across face-to-face, hybrid and online formats. My courses sit mostly in management, marketing, business operations and entrepreneurship, and they are built around the same idea: a student should leave able to do something, not able to describe something.

  • 4 featured subject areas — strategy, operations, entrepreneurship and SMEs, capstone supervision
  • 2 countries and two languages of instruction — English and Arabic
  • 3 delivery formats: face-to-face, hybrid and online
Teaching philosophy

Outcome-based, applied, consistent — in two languages

Outcome-based design: every assessment traces to a learning outcome, and students see the rubric before they see the assignment. Applied over theoretical: projects and cases with genuine ambiguity, not tidy textbook problems. Consistent assessment: the same criteria, applied the same way, across every section. Bilingual where useful: teaching in English and Arabic has made me more careful about assuming which examples will land.

Featured subject areas

Strategic Management and Leadership

Strategic management is the course I have taught most often and thought about hardest — delivered with its graduate counterpart, Advanced Strategic Management, alongside fundamentals of management, human resource management, leadership and organisational behaviour, at the Islamic University of Lebanon and at St. Clair College.

  • Strategic Management
  • Advanced Strategic Management (graduate)
  • Fundamentals of Management I and II
More on this subject

Strategic management is the course I have taught most often and thought about hardest. I have delivered it and its graduate counterpart, Advanced Strategic Management, along with fundamentals of management, human resource management, leadership and organisational behaviour, at the Islamic University of Lebanon and at St. Clair College.

All courses
  • Strategic Management
  • Advanced Strategic Management (graduate)
  • Fundamentals of Management I and II
  • Human Resource Management
  • Leadership
  • Organizational Behaviour
  • Management and Human Resources (St. Clair College)
Institutions
Islamic University of Lebanon
St. Clair College
University of Niagara Falls Canada (graduate business strategy)

Business Operations

MRK 550 — Business Operations, St. Clair College, taught across multiple concurrent sections. I teach it the way I do because I spent years on the other side of it: scheduling, workflow and resource planning are not abstractions to me.

  • MRK 550 Business Operations (St. Clair College, multiple sections 2024–2025)
  • Operations Management (Islamic University of Lebanon)
  • Inventory Management (Islamic University of Lebanon)
More on this subject

MRK 550 — Business Operations, St. Clair College. I have taught it across multiple concurrent sections. I teach it the way I do because I spent years on the other side of it — reviewing how small firms actually run, where the process breaks, and what a change to it costs. Scheduling, workflow and resource planning are not abstractions to me.

All courses
  • MRK 550 Business Operations (St. Clair College, multiple sections 2024–2025)
  • Operations Management (Islamic University of Lebanon)
  • Inventory Management (Islamic University of Lebanon)
  • Value Chain (Islamic University of Lebanon)

Entrepreneurship and SME Development

Where my teaching, research and consulting all point at the same thing: International Business Management at St. Clair College, SME Management and Microfinance in Lebanon, published research on SMEs in the Lebanese economy, and twenty years advising exactly these businesses.

  • International Business Management (IBM 250) — St. Clair College, three concurrent sections, Fall 2024
  • SME Management (Islamic University of Lebanon)
  • Microfinance (Islamic University of Lebanon)
More on this subject

This is where my teaching, my research and my consulting all point at the same thing. I teach in St. Clair College’s International Business Management programme, I taught SME Management and Microfinance in Lebanon, my published research examines the role of small and medium enterprises in the Lebanese economy, and I have spent twenty years advising exactly these businesses.

Authored courses
Customer Retention Strategies for Small Businesses
How to Create a Professional Business Plan for Canadian Immigration (IRPR 205(a))

Capstone and Applied Project Supervision

I currently supervise graduate capstone projects at the University of Niagara Falls Canada. Capstone work is the closest thing a degree offers to real consulting, and it fails in the same place consulting fails: at the start, when the question is too broad or the evidence does not exist.

More on this subject

I currently supervise graduate capstone projects at the University of Niagara Falls Canada, and I supervised graduate applied research for years in Lebanon. Capstone work is the closest thing a degree offers to real consulting, and it fails in the same place consulting fails: at the start, when the question is too broad or the evidence does not exist.

Capstone supervision follows the arc of a real consulting engagement. Students begin by identifying a genuine business problem rather than selecting a topic, then narrow it into a research question that can actually be answered within the term. From there the work moves through a structured sequence: a project plan with defined scope, stakeholders, milestones and risks; a literature and industry review that establishes what is already known; a methodology appropriate to the question and to the data available; analysis and interpretation; and finally a set of recommendations with an implementation path.

Supervision is deliberately weighted toward the early stages, because most capstone projects that fail do so in the first three weeks, when the question is too broad or the data does not exist. Regular checkpoints replace end-of-term rescue. Assessment uses structured rubrics applied consistently across the section, and feedback is given against the same criteria students were shown at the outset.

The intended outcome is not a long document. It is a student who can take an ambiguous business situation, define what needs answering, gather evidence, reach a defensible conclusion, and present it to people who will act on it.

Institutions
University of Niagara Falls Canada — graduate capstone projects, current
Islamic University of Lebanon — graduate applied research supervision
Current institutions

Two appointments, selected courses

Professor, Business and Management

Zekelman School of Business, St. Clair College

Windsor, Ontario · June 2023 – present

  • MRK 550 — Business Operations, multiple concurrent sections, 2024–2025
  • International Business Management (IBM 250) — three concurrent sections, Fall 2024
  • Management and Human Resources · Marketing · Organizational Leadership

Sessional Professor, Business Analytics

University of Niagara Falls Canada

Niagara Falls, Ontario · January 2026 – present

  • DAMO 699 — Capstone, graduate capstone project supervision, Summer 2026
  • Graduate business strategy and data-driven decision making
  • Mentoring in research design, project planning and professional communication
Complete teaching record

The complete teaching record

The remaining subjects, the full academic timeline and the professional practice that ran alongside it.

Marketing

Marketing at St. Clair College, and marketing at the Islamic University of Lebanon delivered entirely in Arabic. Teaching the same discipline in two languages to two very different markets changes how you teach it — you stop treating the examples as universal.

Courses
  • Marketing (St. Clair College)
  • Marketing, Arabic-language delivery (Islamic University of Lebanon)
  • Marketing analytics and market research
Authored course
Introduction to Email Marketing
Business Planning, Strategy and Analysis

Business planning is unusual among the subjects I teach, because I do it professionally as well. Feasibility studies at the Islamic University of Lebanon, business strategy at graduate level, and a full authored course on preparing a professional business plan — while at the same time writing plans, models and market assessments for real clients.

Taught

  • Feasibility Studies
  • Strategic Management
  • Graduate business strategy
  • Competitive, industry and situation analysis
  • SWOT and PESTEL

Practised

  • Business plans
  • Financial models
  • Market assessments
  • Feasibility studies
  • Growth strategies — see Business & Projects
Academic Mentoring

Career development, coaching, professional guidance, letters of recommendation, and research-design mentoring. As department head I also mentored faculty through professional development and evaluation.

Platforms and professional development
Platforms
  • Blackboard Learn
  • Cascade (D2L)
  • Microsoft Teams
  • Pearson courseware
  • Online assessment and learning-analytics tools
Professional development
Innovative Pedagogies for Better Student Engagement — CLICKS workshop, Islamic University of Lebanon, December 2019
Student Assessment in Online Learning Environments — CLICKS and AUF, June 2020
Designing for Online Learning — CLICKS and AUF, July 2020
Academic experience — the institutional record

Teaching and leadership separated, because they are different kinds of work. Overlapping dates are shown as overlapping: a career with two tracks.

  1. Current January 2026 – present · concurrent · Niagara Falls, Ontario

    University of Niagara Falls Canada

    Sessional Professor, Business Analytics

    Teaching
    Graduate-level business analytics, business strategy and data-driven decision making.
    Supervision
    Graduate capstone projects — problem identification, analysis and evidence-based recommendations.
    Mentoring
    Research design, project planning, academic writing, presentation development and professional communication.
    Assessment
    Evaluation of complex graduate work against structured rubrics aligned to academic and professional standards.
  2. Current June 2023 – present · concurrent · Windsor, Ontario

    St. Clair College — Zekelman School of Business

    Professor, Business and Management

    Teaching
    Management, marketing, business operations, international business, human resources and organisational leadership, across face-to-face, hybrid and online formats. Named courses include Business Operations (MRK 550) and courses in the International Business Management programme.
    Curriculum and assessment
    Design of assessments, rubrics and learning activities aligned to outcome-based education principles; participation in curriculum review, quality assurance and continuous improvement.
    Mentoring
    Student career development, leadership coaching and professional guidance.
    Platforms
    Blackboard Learn, Cascade (D2L), Microsoft Teams, Pearson courseware.
  3. 2010 – 2021 · Faculty of Business and Economics · Tyre and Beirut campuses

    Islamic University of Lebanon

    Eleven years, two campuses, one university

    2019 – 2021 · Beirut campus

    Head of Management Department (2020 – 2021)

    Departmental direction
    Academic and administrative operations of the Management Department, including budget, course scheduling, workload allocation and resource planning.
    Faculty leadership
    Recruitment, supervision, evaluation and professional development across a multidisciplinary teaching team; coordination of course delivery for consistency across the faculty.
    Curriculum
    Modernisation of departmental curriculum and alignment of programmes with institutional strategy.
    Quality assurance
    Accreditation preparation and quality-assurance review using performance and outcomes data.
    Governance
    Participation in university strategic planning and policy development; coordination between faculty, students and senior leadership.
    2010 – 2019 · Tyre campus

    Management Instructor and Faculty Coordinator

    Teaching
    Undergraduate and graduate courses in strategic management, advanced strategic management, human resource management, operations management, SME management, leadership, marketing, fundamentals of management, international management, microfinance and feasibility studies — delivered in English and Arabic.
    Coordination
    Coordination of management courses across the Faculty of Business and Economics, ensuring consistency of delivery.
    Supervision
    Graduate research and applied business projects: research design, data analysis and academic writing.
    Curriculum
    Curriculum development and programme enhancement initiatives.
  4. c. 2018 · concurrent

    American University of Technology, Lebanon

    Instructor — one course

    Teaching
    A single course, taught concurrently with the Islamic University of Lebanon appointment at Tyre. This is the affiliation named on the 2018 publication on the role of SMEs in the Lebanese economy.