Transdisciplinary Thinking, Relationship-Rich Teaching, and Human-Centered AI

Hi, I’m Anzar, an academic, learning designer, and educational systems thinker working at the intersection of transdisciplinary learning, relationship-rich pedagogy, and human-centered AI.

Originally trained as an experimental physicist, I later had the unique opportunity to help create Pakistan’s first liberal arts and sciences university, Habib University, as a founding faculty member. There, I founded the interdisciplinary Integrated Sciences and Mathematics program, co-founded the Center for Transdisciplinarity, Design and Innovation, and later served as the founding Associate Dean for Teaching and Learning. Much of my work focused on rethinking curriculum, faculty development, learning experiences, and institutional systems in response to the changing realities of higher education.

Today, I serve as the first Chief Learning Officer at San Francisco Bay University, where my work spans AI-integrated learning, faculty development, curriculum redesign, and the design of more human-centered educational systems. At SFBU, I have helped shape a new transdisciplinary general education model built around ten “How To” courses designed to make the hidden curriculum more visible and intentionally develop durable human capabilities often valued but rarely made explicit within higher education.

Much of this work explores how higher education can respond more honestly to changing technological and human realities through trauma-informed teaching, neurodivergence, culturally sustaining practices, metacognitive learning, authentic assessment, relationship-rich pedagogy, and new forms of AI-supported learning experiences.

Across these different roles and institutions, a recurring theme in my work has been the belief that education must move beyond rigid disciplinary boundaries, static content delivery, and industrial-era assumptions about learning. This site brings together some of those ongoing explorations through courses, workshops, public conversations, writing, and educational experiments centered around learning, creativity, systems thinking, institutional transformation, and the evolving relationship between humans and intelligent technologies.