chw supports education
Hadassah Academic College (HAC)
CHW is proud to be the sole representative in Canada for Hadassah Academic College (HAC). HAC is a non-profit, non-governmental public institution of higher learning. HAC is consistently ranked among Israel’s best colleges and is known for its career-focused and innovative teaching methods, as well as its diverse culture and is one of the only colleges to support Arab, Muslim, and Jewish students all under one roof.
One-half of the College’s students are the first in their family to pursue a college education, over 60% come from challenging socio-economic backgrounds, 70% are women, and 20% of the students are Christian and Muslim Arabs.
HAC measures its success by the ability of its graduates to secure jobs with a future upon graduation. The College has the highest job placement rate (85%) of any college or university in Israel, and the highest rate of student retention (92%). Hadassah Academic College’s Department of Communication Disorders is ranked as Israel’s leading program for training certified speech and language therapists.
For more information please visit: www.hadassah.ac.il/en/
CURRENT PROJECTS:
The Blender Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Early in 2021, HAC launched The Blender – HAC’s Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, in collaboration with the Jerusalem Development Authority. The Blender was founded by Dr. Tali Hadasa Blank, a Senior Lecturer on innovation and entrepreneurship, and a researcher whose work is focused on radical innovation, team learning, and the processes influencing the success of start-up ventures. The Blender’s other senior advisor is Prof. Michael Berman, head of HAC’s Department of Computer Science, who previously established and secured funding for four technology-based start-ups.
The Blender has spearheaded HAC’s efforts to nurture students and faculty to develop an entrepreneurial perspective. The Blender’s specially designed programs and activities provide stepping-stones into the world of innovation and entrepreneurship.
The Blender offers a myriad of opportunities for participants, including guest lectures given by leading figures from various industries, in-depth workshops, hackathons, challenges, and a pre-accelerator program. The goal of these activities is to nurture a culture of innovation and an entrepreneurial mindset within the campus and a foundation for cross-cultural synergy and collaboration among the diverse students and staff members from HAC’s different academic departments.
Since its inception in March 2021, The Blender has participated in two international hackathons: one focused on the future of higher education, and the other on combating violence towards children. Once a year The Blender offers a pre-acceleration program, over a period of 10 weeks, which includes lectures and workshops to assist students and faculty to transform innovative ideas into business or social initiatives. In November 2021, The Blender moved its activities into a newly designated facility on HAC’s campus and launched its second pre-accelerator program. In the first pre-accelerator program, The Blender successfully facilitated 16 teams. One of the two initiatives which represented HAC in a national student competition, conducted by the Council for Higher Education, received a 50,000 NIS grant for further implementation.
The Blender is developing tailor-made programs to accommodate the diverse communities within HAC’s student body. Such programs include empowering women entrepreneurs, creating entrepreneurial opportunities for ultra-Orthodox students, levelling the playing field for Arab-speaking students, and expanding career opportunities for Ethiopian-Israeli students.
Read a story about The Blender in a recent issue of ORAH magazine here:
The Alanna Elias Scholarship For Student Excellence
In honour and recognition of Alanna Elias’s 30-year anniversary with CHW, we committed to fund a student scholarship at The Blender Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at HAC in Jerusalem. The Alanna Elias Scholarship for Student Excellence will provide annual recognition of a female student who is excelling in their studies.
This scholarship will help provide tuition support for a needy student so they can reach their full potential and make a positive impact in their communities and beyond.
Through this scholarship, we hope to continue Alanna’s legacy of supporting and empowering women, to encourage and recognize the next generation of female leaders in business and innovation in Israel.
Our goal is to endow $20,000 so the Alanna Elias Scholarship for Student Excellence can be presented in perpetuity to a student at HAC.
The DAN Department of Creative Human Design
The DAN Department of Creative Human Design at HAC recognizes the essential role of quality industrial design in the contemporary consumer marketplace, and even goes one step further: its goal is to facilitate future designers’ development of tools, instruments, and products designed to be used by all people, with a special emphasis on populations with support needs.
The DAN Department emphasizes the functional, cultural, and aesthetic roles of design in every aspect of our environment. For this reason, the program consciously cultivates students’ sense of curiosity, openness, aesthetics and attention to detail. The core program imparts students with a technical tool kit for the future: computer program knowledge, studio courses, workshop classes, and understanding the design process’ research, development, and structural elements. These practical skills are combined with exposure to the history and anthropology of design, and its role in defining how people understand and interact with each other and their environment.
The department focuses on the development of aesthetic sensitivity to cultural, environmental, and practical considerations of the inclusive approach to design. This approach aims to adjust environments, products, and services for a variety of users, regardless of age, people with disabilities, or circumstances.
Read more about the DAN Department and two award-winning student innovations in a recent edition of ORAH magazine:
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