Joe Malak has over 20 years of experience in the software industry. He started as an Applications Engineer for a Computer Aided Design (CAD) / Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) / Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) software company called Autodesk in 1995, then moved on to work for Hewlett Packard (H-P) also as an Applications Engineer / Deployment Manager for an online collaboration application for Engineers. He also worked for Pitney Bowes as a Sr. Support Engineer and with Dassault Systems as a Sr. Product Support Manager. Joe Malak worked as a Program Manager for Tech Mahindra, an India based consulting company, and as a Project Manager for FedEx.
Joe Malak has about 7 years of experience as a Program and Project manager. As a Program Manager at Tech Mahindra, he managed a multi-year, multi-million dollar program that included the development, configuration, and support of a PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) environment with about 12 different downstream applications. There were about 55 developers offshore and 5 developers/team leads onsite. Each quarter, the team delivered 12 different releases, one for each application using a combination of Waterfall and Agile with Scrum methodologies. As a Project manager for FedEx, he managed several projects for software development, production support and systematic reports for the Target.com E-Commerce Program.
Teaching and Research Interests:
Joe Malak’s philosophy of teaching is to provide a classroom environment where students are encouraged to express their own ideas and participate in their educational experiences. Although he stresses individual responsibility for learning in the class, he also provides explanation and guidance regarding the course materials and subject matter. He encourages his students to enjoy the interaction in the classroom and to be challenged by the intellectual discussion of course material.
At the end of each class, Joe Malak wants his students to remember the following about him as an instructor:
“He cared about me as a person and valued my contributions to class discussions.”
“He created an environment in the classroom which inspired learning and encouraged individual responsibility for education.”
These statements are used as a guide for his performance in the classroom and to define his teaching philosophy. He provides examples of how he applies these guides in his teaching.
As an instructor, Joe Malak has the responsibility to help his students learn how to learn. His hope is to inspire students with a desire to learn more on their own. He encourages students to take advantage of resources other than standard course materials and lectures. He assigns projects which require interaction with the World Wide Web, Electronic Mail, and other Internet-related resources. This shows his students the tremendous availability of resources to use in learning about almost any subject matter they are studying.
Joe Malak motivates his students to take individual responsibility for their education by being prepared to participate in class. He encourages student participation by using active learning techniques to draw individuals into class discussions. During class meetings, he poses questions to students and their responses are used as a foundation for the concepts to be covered during the class period. In addition, he attempts to redirect questions posed by students in the class to other students. By using active learning techniques, he hopes to help his students understand that they are responsible for their own education experience.
Education
DBA in Management of Information Systems, Walden University, Minneapolis, MN, 2016.
MBA in Project Management, American InterContinental University, Hoffman Estates, IL, 2007.
M.Sc. In Mechanical Engineering, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, 1995.
B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering, Cairo University, Cairo, ARE, 1990.
