Technion is undergoing significant organizational and conceptual changes in order to improve instruction and mentoring campus-wide, which will provide our graduates with a richer and broader education through teaching, learning, and research. These changes are being realized through a broad array of initiatives, as highlighted below:
Department of Humanities and Arts
The department is undergoing a complete transformation to evolve it from a service unit offering courses in sports, English, and humanities, to a center that supports in-depth study and research. The department’s new mission emphasizes the importance of the field of Humanities as an integral part of the education of engineers and scientists through research, mentoring and teaching with focus on history and philosophy of science and engineering, ethics, and social and environmental awareness.
International campus
The ongoing conceptual and organizational changes regarding the decentralization of the Technion International School, aim to strengthen the international culture campus-wide. This activity, which is critical at a time when international relations have been directly affected by the coronavirus crisis, aims at a cultural change on campus, taking a significant step towards reinforcing Technion as a major player in the global arena.
Center for Promotion of Learning and Teaching
The center’s mission has been redefined to become the primary facilitator for the transformation of learning and teaching within the faculties in addition to its current role. The strategy is to motivate individual faculty members, as well as the whole faculty, to broaden teaching capabilities, to exploit the latest digital techniques, and to integrate advanced methodologies into the Technion’s curriculum.
English Language Studies
Undergraduate English language courses have been revised and revamped to emphasize reading, writing, comprehension and communication skills. Technion has also begun to implement the Council of Higher Education’s requirement to teach two mandatory professional courses in English. A pilot scheme will be launched to teach English to graduate students with a focus on communication skills.
Undergraduate School Admissions
Technion is investigating new methodologies for screening potential undergraduate candidates including: the replacement of the psychometric exam with a math test; combination of the “sechem” and a personal interview; or credits acquired outside of Technion. The goal of these experimental models is to recruit outstanding students who otherwise would not be accepted, and to increase the diversity of the student population.
Entrepreneurship Center
t-Hub, the Technion Entrepreneurship Center continues to develop and integrate formal and extra-curricular entrepreneurship courses and activities at all levels, throughout the campus, such as the undergraduate study program in entrepreneurial leadership. We are integrating entrepreneurial training for graduate students, including: the Start Up MBA program, the t-start programs and t-doc entrepreneurship programs for PhD students. Also in the pipeline are programs for faculty, an Entrepreneurship Day in collaboration with Eurotech, and other such activities.
These above initiatives are accompanied by a comprehensive in-depth process led by Prof. Hossam Haick, Dean of Undergraduate Studies and Prof. Arnon Bentur, and focus on the development of a strategic plan for undergraduate studies at Technion. The aim is to redefine the objectives of undergraduate studies with an emphasis on education, rather than just teaching and learning, within the framework of Technion’s overarching strategic plan. The goal is to augment the added value of the Technion graduate, creating the leaders of tomorrow. An in-depth analysis of undergraduate studies was conducted to identify fundamental challenges, including:
>> Combining subjects from the humanities, social sciences, life sciences and data sciences to develop leadership in engineering and science
>> Encouraging interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and supra-disciplinary studies
>> Recruiting candidates who best fit the profile of our ideal graduate
>> Creating teaching models that maximize interactions with faculty members to leverage the potential of Technion’s human capital.
On a final note, it is impossible to talk about the past year without relating to the pandemic. Since Friday, March 13, 2020, when exams were canceled because of the pandemic, not a single day has gone by without dealing with issues related to the pandemic and its implications for Technion.
During this period, Technion underwent significant and accelerated changes as online learning and teaching became the new normal, continuing throughout the entire academic year. Consequently, we reinvented how we teach, examine, and communicate with our students and how they learn. Not only that. We then reinvented how we teach, learn, and communicate with students within the framework of new hybrid teaching models. For this purpose, we worked closely with the heads of the academic departments, the Technion Deans, the center for promotion of learning and teaching, and the Campus administration to plan and provide the academic, physical, computing, and operational infrastructure required across the whole campus during the pandemic.
After intense planning and preparations, I am happy to report that this semester, we welcomed the return of students en masse to campus, a return to face-to-face teaching and learning, accompanied by distance learning using an array of online means, and the vital and constructive interaction that derives from being on campus.