For Governors State University accounting professor Aida A.H. Shekib, education is a 24-hour vocation.
”The learning never stops,” says Shekib, a Matteson resident. ”When you`re driving, you`re thinking about your work. You may watch the news and find something for the class the next day. It`s a never-ending process.”
For Shekib, 51, education is also a reciprocal endeavor, and she thrives on it. ”I like the interaction of being an educator,” she says. ”You can almost learn as much from the students as you give them. I`m more of a giving person by nature, so I feel like I`m contributing something.”
Shekib usually teaches four classes a week totaling about 100 to 120 students at the University Park university. She also spends many hours preparing for class, writing and attending seminars.
One of the best rewards of teaching is meeting former students who work in accounting, Shekib says. ”I feel really good when I visit a downtown company and I find one of my former students working there,” she says.
She also finds the diversity of the student body rewarding. ”I talk to the younger students about their boyfriends (and girlfriends) and the older students about their children,” she says.
”The experienced students tend to appreciate education a little more. Most come back to school after some experience in the field. However, I also enjoy instructing the young and inexperienced and excited student.”
Among her favorite accomplishments as an educator are the university policy decisions she has helped shape. The one memory that keeps coming back is when we hired current university President Leo Goodman-Malamuth in 1976, Shekib recalls. ”I was the chairman of the committee that hired him and, from the first day I saw him, I thought he was the person we needed.”
Shekib also has helped form a grading policy for the school and bring YMCA services to the campus. ”Even after I leave, these policies will still be around,” she says. ”So my impression will have been made on the university.”
Since Shekib came to Governors State in 1973, the accounting field has evolved, she says. To keep up to date, she researches and writes for professional journals and reads constantly. She also attends trade conferences and is active in professional organizations such as the National Association of Accountants. She was president of the Calumet chapter last year.
”I keep myself alive in the field by being part of it,” says Shekib, who was born and raised in Egypt. ”Many of the important topics today include management, pensions and telecommunications.”
Shekib, who has three younger sisters and a younger brother, credits her late father for her strong education orientation.
”My father was unusual because he was conservative and we doubted that he would push his daughters toward higher education,” she says. ”But as we grew up, he changed and told us he wanted us to be more than housewives, which back then was quite different from the norm. But he had been educated, and he knew the value of an education.”
Shekib initially considered medicine and law, but that changed when she started attending Alexandria University.
”For some reason, I wanted to be an accountant but an accountant who would use accounting for people and not use it to make money,” she says. ”I didn`t want to be just a pencil pusher. So I thought teaching would be the most rewarding approach. I also wanted to do something different. Not too many women in Egypt in the 1950s went into accounting. Also in Egypt, professors are highly respected.”
With encouragement from her father and the rest of her family, Shekib graduated from Alexandria University in 1960 at the head of the class, the first woman to do so.
Shekib returned to Alexandria University to receive a graduate diploma, equivalent to a master`s degree in accounting, in 1962, and then she and her husband, Farouk Shaaban, came to the U.S.
”He had received a scholarship from the Egyptian and U.S. governments to study business in the United States,” says Shekib, whose husband is a marketing professor at Governors State.
Shekib received a master`s in business administration from Indiana University, Bloomington, in 1964 and a doctorate in accounting from the University of Illinois in 1970.
She served for three years as an assistant professor of accounting at Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, before going to Governors State. An acquaintance had told her about the school.
”I was convinced that Governors State was an educator`s dream,” Shekib says. ”The school was new, and there was very little structure; everything was up to the professor. There was also no rank or tenure for the faculty, so it meant you had to work hard.
”The faculty was (made up of) graduates from the University of Chicago, Stanford and the University of Illinois, so I felt I was going to be in good company. It was also primarily a graduate and junior and senior student school, so I`d be working with a more professional student.
”It sounded like a place where I could make my mark on my profession.”
A year later, Shekib`s husband joined her at the south suburban university. ”We`ve been going to school together for all of our lives, so there`s been no conflict with both of us working for Governors State University,” Shekib says. ”It even has some good sides, because we can talk about business together and sometimes we can even ride in together. But our roles are very different and very separate.”
Shekib and her husband`s emphasis on education has been transmitted to their three sons. The eldest has graduated from Boston University in biomedical engineering and is studying for a master`s degree in business. Their second son is a third-year medical student at the University of Illinois. The youngest is in elementary school, ”but he is thinking about becoming a lawyer,” Shekib says. ”He said we need a lawyer in the family.” A Matteson resident since 1973, Shekib says she is happy residing there.
”We`ve been living in the same house for 16 years, and we like it here,”
she says. ”Matteson, however, has changed tremendously. It had only 3,000 people here when we first moved here, and we thought it was too many then. But it`s still a very nice town and has all the facilities we need.”
During their time off, Shekib says, she and her husband like to visit Chicago`s museums.
”In the Chicago area, there is so much to learn about: from the diversity of the people here to the museums,” she says. ”So the learning never stops.”
Governors State was established in 1969 as one of two universities in the state (the other is Sangamon State in Springfield) that offers only junior and senior courses for undergraduate students. It also offers master`s courses.
The school has drawn older, south suburban professionals who seek to expand on their education. Only in recent months has the undergraduate enrollment surpassed graduate enrollment. In fall 1989, university officials reported 2,691 undergraduate and 2,623 graduate students.
The university has grown a great deal in its two-decade history, Goodman- Malamuth says. Enrollment in 1971, the first year classes were held, was 695. He attributed the growth to the university`s emphasis on older students and the flexibility of its programs. It offers classes from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m.; has off-campus sites in Joliet, Orland Park and Kankakee; and offers 30 courses on cable television.
Goodman-Malamuth also attributed the school`s growth to the recent growth in the south suburbs.
”I have seen tremendous change in the past five or six years in Matteson, Richton Park, Orland Park, Tinley Park, etc.,” he says. ”There`s much more building going on.”
Governors State students contribute to the south suburbs differently than traditional undergraduates, Goodman-Malamuth says. ”They`re adults, so you don`t look at them as you would 18- to 21-year-olds. They serve as township officials and on PTAs and school boards.”
Teachers such as Shekib are valuable to the school, Goodman-Malamuth says.
”One of the things she brings back to the classroom is the practical side” of accounting, he says. ”She has an ability, like many of the professors, to create a marriage between theory and practice.”
