Feb. 2021

Mahmoud Harding is a North Carolina native, having grown up in Oxford, NC. He attended North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (NC A&T) where he started a degree program in industrial engineering. After a summer internship, he decided that it wasn't for him. He was already tutoring students in the math department at NC A&T, and an advisor encouraged him to move into the math education program. Mr. Harding made the switch and earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics education with a minor in computer science. He later went back and earned his master’s degree in applied mathematics at NC A&T a few years later. Most recently, Mr. Harding has completed the certificate program in Applied Statistics and Data Management at North Carolina State University.

Mr. Harding began his teaching career in Greensboro, before working as a programmer and systems administrator for a few years. While he enjoyed the work in the IT sector, he found that “at the end of the day you're stuck in a room click-clacking away on a computer.” Missing the excitement and energy that come with working alongside students, when his friend from the United Arab Emirates told him about opportunities to teach in the Middle East, Mr. Harding jumped at the opportunity to teach at Alfaisal University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He lived and worked in Riyadh for 15 years before moving back to North Carolina in 2017, helping his daughter attend nursing school back home in NC. Mr. Harding joined the faculty of NCSSM in 2017 and has been teaching across all of NCSSM's programs ever since. You might know Mr. Harding from your AP Calculus coursework in the NCSSM Online program!

Mr. Harding loves working at the intersection of mathematics and computer science and is always looking for ways to infuse the math classroom with cool new activities that take advantage of the powerful computation computers allow. Mr. Harding has been one of the lead instructors in NCSSM's new data science coursework in the residential program (coming soon to the Online Program), helping create new opportunities for NCSSM students to work data in meaningful ways to bolster their analysis skills across disciplines.

When not in the classroom, Mr. Harding is probably listening to podcasts. He is an avid listener of anything that gets him thinking about new and exciting topics, whether it's the inner workings of Robinhood during the latest stock craze, or what Pablo Escobar's hippos are up to these days. An avid sports fan, lately Mr. Harding has been looking to get into coaching youth basketball and loves the energy and excitement that young people bring, either to the sports field or the classroom.