She received her Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University in 1991; her dissertation topic was "Training Arab-Ottoman Bureaucrats: Syrian Graduates of the Mulkiye Mektebi, 1890-1920." She became interested in using the Internet while teaching at Rowan, and presented a paper entitled "Sources for Middle Eastern Historians on the Internet" at the Middle Eastern Studies Association Conference in 1995. Last fall, she organized a panel on "Teaching with Technology: Middle East History and Politics" at the M.E.S.A. conference in San Francisco, and presented an earlier version of "Teaching Islamic Civilization with Technology" at the conference. Currently, she is working on incorporating more Internet material into her courses on the Modern Middle East and the Arab-Israeli Conflict.