I’m Dr. Sahar Mari, and I design learning experiences: courses, workshops, resources, and the spaces where people learn together. My work draws on the cognitive and learning sciences, a background in graphic design, and a lot of time spent listening to faculty and students about what actually helps.
I’m at my best as a collaborator and facilitator. I’m excited to build something with people rather than for them, whether that’s partnering with a faculty member on a course redesign, leading a workshop on generative AI in teaching, or bringing a room of strangers together over a compass and straightedge. Community matters to me: connecting people, learning out loud, and making it safe to experiment. I currently bring this work to Northwestern University in Qatar as a Senior Learning Engineer, where I also serve as Canvas administrator and campus digital accessibility liaison.
I earned my EdD from the Johns Hopkins School of Education, with a focus on Mind, Brain, and Teaching. My dissertation examined how first-year students experience the transition into an international branch campus. It pulled together threads I’d been following for years: the first-year experience, the first-year seminar, deep learning, the hidden curriculum, and Universal Design for Learning. I think of myself as a scholar-practitioner, someone who reads the research closely and then asks what it looks like on a Tuesday morning, in a classroom, with real students.
My approach borrows from design thinking and systems thinking. I like to understand the root of a teaching challenge instead of rushing to fix the symptom, and I’m a steady advocate for active learning, metacognition, and classrooms where students learn how to learn. Accessibility is part of that from the start, not a fix at the end. I design with neurodivergent learners and a wide range of needs in mind, drawing on Universal Design for Learning where it fits: clear structure, flexible paths, and more than one way to engage and show what you know.
Before NU-Q, I spent five years coaching students, teaching a first-year course, and leading hundreds of in-class workshops at Texas A&M University at Qatar, where I was the inaugural recipient of the Outstanding Advocate for First-Year Students Award. In 2026, I received the Outstanding Contribution to NU-Q Staff award.
I’m a designer and artist at heart, and my path into education started there. I hold an MFA in Graphic Design and Visual Experience from Savannah College of Art and Design and dual BFAs in Graphic Design and Fashion Design, with a minor in Art History, from VCUarts Qatar, where I was the first Qatar-campus student to receive the university’s leadership award. That training still shapes how I approach a course, a page, or a workshop.