It would be nerve-wracking enough to stand in front of a lecture hall and spout your knowledge to a group of students. But what if your students were the same age as you – or worse yet, even older?
It would be nerve-wracking enough to stand in front of a lecture hall and spout your knowledge to a group of students. But what if your students were the same age as you –or worse yet, even older?
For Alia Sabur, a math and physics professor from Northport, New York, this is no rare occurence: At 19 years old, she is the youngest college professor in history.
This girl genius caught the education bug early in life. She was reading by 8 months of age, and had finished elementary school by 5 –right around the time when her peers were entering kindergarden. By the age of 14, she’d graduated summa cum laude with a degree in applied mathematics from Stonybrook University, which she followed with an M.S. and a Ph.D in materials science and engineering from Drexel University.
Three days before her 19th birthday, Sabur landed a teaching job as a college professor at Konkuk University in Seoul, South Korea. The position is set to start next month, but until then, she’s practicing her lecture skills at Southern University in New Orleans, where she’s teaching math and physics.
Sabur may not be old enough to join her students for after-class drinks in a bar yet, but she’s still pretty pleased with her new position. “I really enjoy teaching,” she told The Today Show. “It’s something where you can make a difference. It’s not just what you can do, but you can enable a lot of other people to make their changes.”