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July 18, 2008
Trailblazing in Israel's north
Country's newest Silicon Valley shows a frontier-building spirit.
MICHELLE DODEK
Tel Hai College is trying to protect one of the most important frontiers of Israel. Closer to Damascus than to Tel Aviv, this small academic college in the Upper Galilee is using a combination of technology, academia and industry to help fuel the economy in the Galilee, so people will settle there. The vice-president of external relations and development of Tel Hai College, Sagi Melamed, visited Vancouver on July 3 to raise awareness about his little-known college in the far north of Israel. Of course, he was also hoping to raise some money.
Tel Hai is a success story, said Melamed, in an area that is challenged by many factors, including its distance from the centre of Israel and its proximity to the northern borders with Syria and Lebanon. "The periphery is always the weak part of the country," commented Melamed, "it suffers from unemployment, bad image and negative immigration." He explained that Tel Hai would like to reverse these trends.
Melamed grew up on a moshav near Haifa and now lives in a community of 350 families just south of Kiryat Shmona. "The scenery is beautiful there. It's the most beautiful place in Israel," Melamed said with a big smile on his face. "Looking south, you can see to the whole Hula Valley and to the east is the Golan and Mt. Hermon. Many people who study at Tel Hai from other parts of the country want to stay there, but they need jobs," he said.
This is the frontier-building approach of the college, Melamed explained. Only 20 per cent of the students at Tel Hai are from the Upper Galilee, the rest are from other parts of Israel. It's one thing to get students to an under-populated region of the country, enticing them with scholarships, excellent academic programs and a character-building community service program attached to their degrees, but the challenge is to get them to stay in the region once they finish their studies.
Melamed outlined the action plan that Tel Hai has for population building and economic growth as a "triangle development plan." The idea is to bring Tel Hai, the academic centre, MIGAL, a research centre, and Meytav, an advanced technology incubator, together onto one new campus. Currently, Tel Hai has facilities to educate 2,500 students in its academic stream and 1,000 in the non-academic. The aim is to expand the campus to accommodate 1,000 more students in the social sciences by October 2008 and, within five years, to have a new facility for the sciences. This entire campus is a $100 million project. The first phase of the new expanded campus will also house Meytav, the industrial arm of the triangle plan. Not only will Meytav use the research developed at the college, but it will also employ graduates who stay in the area and make lives for themselves there.
People who decide to stay in this region have to be looking for more than just a good job and inexpensive housing, however, noted Melamed. It is a hot zone in the country because of its proximity to Lebanon and Syria. Two years ago, the construction of the first phase was just starting, the area had been levelled and prepared for building when the Lebanon war began. More than 1,000 Katyusha rockets hit the Upper Galilee and the college was evacuated for five weeks. Some exams were held in Tel Aviv so students would not lose their semester, Melamed explained. "After the war was over, instead of waiting to develop, as soon as the army left the area, we decided to go ahead and do it faster, stronger, better! Our motto became 'Despite and Because.'"
In order to regain some of the lost enrolment from the war, Tel Hai appealed to its donors to support them with scholarships that would serve as incentives for students to enrol. "It worked, " said Melamed. "We ended with 10 per cent growth at the beginning of the year – up from 40 per cent down during the war."
Financial incentives are not the only draw of Tel Hai's academic program. Fifteen per cent of the students studying there have learning disabilities. Melamed touted the centre for learning disabled students as a national leader and one of the best in the world. Tel Hai also requires students to participate in community service projects in order to graduate and, with an Arab student population of 12 per cent, Tel Hai has adopted a tolerance policy that is unusual in Israel. "It's a different atmosphere at Tel Hai. Students celebrate their holidays together, we have mentoring for Arab students who have English as their third language and more keyboards and signage in Arabic around campus," noted Melamed.
The ultimate goal, although he admitted it was nowhere in the foreseeable future, is to have students from all over the region, including Lebanon, Jordan and Syria study together. Although it won't bring peace, in his view, building a stronger Galilee is a step forward for a stronger Israel. Adding a last comment with a warning, Melamed said, "There would be nothing left of Israel if we keep running from the frontiers."
For more information on Tel Hai College, or a tour of the campus if you are in the Upper Galilee, e-mail Sagi Melamed at [email protected].
Michelle Dodek is a Vancouver freelance writer.
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