Heba is a Senior Arabic Language Instructor II in the Department of Arabic Language Instruction at the American University in Cairo. She holds a BA in Mass Communications and Psychology and earned her Master’s degree in Teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language.

Heba has taught a wide range of levels in both Egyptian Colloquial Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic at AUC and at several U.S. institutions, including the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Maryland, and Middlebury College. Her teaching experience spans both skills-based and content-based courses, including Media Arabic. She is the coauthor of Umm al-Dunya, an advanced textbook in Egyptian Colloquial Arabic (AUC Press, 2012). Heba created and currently teaches a content course entitled “Cairo, the City of the Thousand and One Faces,” where students are exposed to the depiction of Cairo, the mega-city, from different perspectives and through various genres. Heba teaches the course to non-native speakers of Arabic and to heritage students.

In addition to teaching, Heba has led teacher training workshops for diverse audiences. Her professional interests include translation, speech analysis, and the relationship between language use and meaning.