Well, first off, if your teacher is trying to make a profit from your work without your permission, or approval, that is then considered illegal under he "Intellectual Copyright Act". USA

Your work is protected by law, regardless of medium.

If your work must be handed in as still, or animated imagery, then you can simply add a watermark to it in Photoshop or after effects as another layer.

If your work is to be turned in as a Maya scene file, then it is still covered under the law.

A cheap (and less secure) alternative would be to export your scene as a Maya .ma file, and edit it to be a .mel script that can be viewed only, and NOT edited.

This can be done by disabling Maya's transform toolset, or better yet, disabling the selection abilities altogether.

Do a search in the Docs for the -sl flag, or selection, or selection list.

Good luck!

PS, you could also add a text watermark to the scene file with a text locator that would be visible in every render, but NOT visible in the viewports.

Just a few ideas....

Also, have a look at this melscript, it MIGHT help, although, I'm not sure on how to use it.
I found it on Highend: