Following his predominantly French high school education, Termos obtained his BBA in finance from Oklahoma City University in 1997 before going to North Carolina State University (NCSU) to earn his MA in economics in 2002.

Having lived through the Lebanese Civil War before witnessing the 1990s economic boom in the United States, Termos, interested in developmental issues, was encouraged by his professors to specialize in economics. “The move from finance to economics was sparked primarily by my interest in research.”

While a graduate student, Termos taught introductory and intermediate economics at NCSU for four years as a teaching assistant before receiving his PhD there in economics in 2005, with a thesis entitled “Banking Structure and the Effect of Monetary Policy on Bank Lending”; recently his interests have encompassed business cycles, the real estate lending channel, and the bank lending channel of monetary policy.

As visiting assistant professor in 2005-06, he taught financial economics at Washington and Lee University in Virginia before going to Sharjah.

This semester Termos is teaching financial markets and institutions to AUB undergraduates, whom he finds “energetic and challenging,” but he has lately observed a growing tendency for students, in general, to get “sometimes distracted from academic work.”

Before his deep involvement in academia, Termos worked as a computer lab assistant in 1996-97, interned at Merrill Lynch in 1997, and, between 2002 and 2004, worked as a free-lance consultant on various projects for industry clients.

Termos sums up his wisdom in the words of Virgil: “Happy is the man who has learned the cause of things and has put under his feet all fears, inexorabe fate, and the noisy strife of the hell of greed."