About – AndrewHeiss.com

Quick rundown

Andrew Heiss at the Pyramids I’m a 25 year old student, designer, and web developer from Orem, Utah. I live in Egypt where I’m working on my MA in Middle East Studies at the American University in Cairo. I’ve been married for 4 years and have one daughter. I use a Mac, take lots of pictures, and love to travel.

This website is about my research, design, and development projects, as well as a central hub for my online presence. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments! Enjoy!

Personal

Nancy Heiss Rachel Heiss I was born in Provo, Utah, and excluding eight years in North Carolina, grew up in Happy Valley—Orem, Utah. I graduated from high school in 2002 and then attended Brigham Young University for a year before leaving for a two year LDS mission in Rome, Italy, from 2003–2005.

After returning from Italy I married an old high school friend, Nancy (Layton) Heiss in December 2005, and we’ve been happily married since then. Our first daughter, Rachel, was born in July 2007.

After I graduated from BYU in April 2008, we moved to Cairo, Egypt, where I’m studying at the American University in Cairo. You can follow our awesome family blog, Heissatopia, for more information about what we’re up to.

Academics

I’m currently an International Graduate Fellow at the American University in Cairo where I’m working on my MA in Middle East Studies. As a graduate fellow I’m responsible for some of the behind-the-scenes work at the Middle East Studies Center, my main responsibilities being the maintenance of the department website and events publicity (design and printing of advertisements for lectures, activities, etc.).

My thesis research, so far, focuses on the Italian community in Egypt in the late 19th/early 20th centuries. It’s still in a very nascent phase, though, so check back for updates on my research. I’m also interested in the role of the Internet in Middle Eastern politics and society, particularly the power of blogs as a political tool.

I speak both Arabic and Italian and have received “advanced” ratings on the ACTFL oral test for both (Advanced High in Arabic, Advanced in Italian).

I completed my BA at Brigham Young University in April 2008 with a double major in Middle East Studies/Arabic and Italian and a minor in Language and Computers. I spent a semester during the summer of 2006 at the University of Jordan in Amman where I studied Arabic.

While an undergraduate I was able to teach several classes. I taught first year Arabic (Arabic 101) for two semesters and Introduction to Print Publishing (CHum 230) for one.

Most of my research as an undergraduate focused on literary connections between Italy and the Arab Middle East during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. I analyzed the works of several Italian poets and authors, including Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarch, and Jacopone da Todi, to see what possible Arab and Islamic influences were present. In March 2007 I presented a paper at the BYU Department of Humanities Symposium Humanitatum entitled “Inferno XXVIII: Orientalism and Oedipus Meet Dante and Mohammed,” which looked at Dante’s treatment of Mohammed in The Divine Comedy.

My research in Middle East Studies focused on media Arabic and looked at the role of objectivity in news reporting in the Arab press, using the Israeli massacre at Qana, Lebanon in 2006 as a case study for the role of language in detecting bias in reporting.

Design and development

I’ve been working with computers since before I remember. I built computers for a couple years as a part time job in the late 90s and got into beginning programming with Visual Basic and basic HTML. Several ago I decided to officially dive into code and development and taught myself higher level XHTML, CSS, SQL, and PHP. I know some Ruby, Perl, and Python, as well, but am most comfortable with good ol’ PHP.

Besides programming, I also design on the side. I taught graphic design in a university class for a semester and I have taught dozens of public classes at the Harold B. Lee Library Multimedia Lab on InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Web Design, and graphic design in general. While working at the Multimedia Lab I became proficient in dozens of different software packages, from Adobe’s Creative Suite to Apple’s Final Cut Pro.

I’ve been involved in many contracted web design jobs and design and typeset books in my spare time.

I started an open source project, pdftk-php, as an outgrowth of a project I was in charge of while I worked at the HBLL Multimedia Lab.