Tel-Hai College: Planting Academic Roots, Growing Northern Israel

When people think of Israeli innovation they usually think of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem – rarely of Israel’s outlying districts. This oversight reflects concrete disparities between the center of the country and its periphery, despite the latter’s great potential.

The Galilee’s green landscapes and community-oriented outlook offer residents a unique-to-the-area quality of life. The local agricultural heritage is a central component of life in the Galilee, Israel’s innovative history, and its future. Despite these assets, the Galilee’s socio-economic ranking is one of the lowest in Israel, and many of its young people move to the country’s center for employment. They do so because of lack of employment opportunities, low salaries (30% lower than those in the center), and the scarcity of available academic or management positions.

Tel-Hai College's strategic transformation into the University of the Galilee will fulfill the potential of the northern periphery that has so much to contribute to Israel and the world via research, academia, social activism and collaborations with industry and community.

The heart of the Galilee’s ecosystem

In Israel, research is the element that separates colleges from universities. We are the only college in Israel with an affiliated research institute. MIGAL–The Galilee Research Institute, is an internationally recognized research center, specializing in biotechnology, computational sciences, plant science, precision agriculture, and environmental sciences, as well as food nutrition and health. The local biodiversity, rich agriculture, and broad spectrum of Israeli society in the Galilee inspire and facilitate region-specific innovation that has national and global impact.

Where others speak of diversity, we live it – daily. Tel-Hai’s cultural mosaic is a unique resource bringing together Israelis from all walks of life. When you add that human element to the scientific, ecological, industrial and agricultural activities around us, you have the foundations for ground-breaking innovation.

However, while 70% of our students come from all over Israel, and 80% of them expressed their desire to settle here, the North continues to suffer from negative migration and "brain drain" due to the lack of employment and advancement possibilities. We are building the academic hub for the very resources that will turn this picture around. Our mission to protect and promote the development and growth of the Galilee obligates us to create reasons for them to stay, and bring other great minds to the not-quite-peripheral-anymore periphery. Academia and research are a proven catalyst for this.

The University of the Galilee

As the University of the Galilee, Tel-Hai will serve as the academic and educational axis around which social, economic and industrial growth will revolve. In addition to the great strides we've already made for the Galilee to date, universities in particular have demonstrably generated growth for the regions in which they've developed, in categories of employment, positive migration, and as a solid base for investment in sync with its natural environment and resources. In other words, our growth into the University of the Galilee is the obvious next step for us in mission advancement, and the region will flourish in turn.

Tel-Hai has evolved into one of Israel's leading colleges, and is the ideal candidate for university status. Less than a year ago, the Council for Higher Education declared Tel-Hai as its chosen institution to establish the University of the Galilee. This decision formalizes what we already know; Tel-Hai and its affiliate research arm MIGAL–Galilee Research Institute, are uniquely positioned to be the growth engine for economic and demographic development of the Galilee. Tel-Hai, as the University of the Galilee, will attract human resources, build innovation centers, and create job opportunities, all contributing to reducing gaps between the North and the center of Israel.

We are honored to have been chosen, and we embrace the opportunities and challenges this will bring us. Our ability to expand our academic and research capacity to university standards is very much due to the collaboration and support of our friends and partners.

Tel-Hai’s regional impact

Food Tech: Tel-Hai scientists provide the academic platform for leading the Food Tech revolution in Northern Israel. We are conducting groundbreaking research, collaborating with startups and food tech incubators as well as industrial food companies to solve pressing global food issues such as food waste, food shortage, alternative proteins and more. Tel-Hai has initiated the founding of Israel's National Food Institute. The institute will serve as a nexus of innovation and applied research, bringing together academia, the food industry and the Food Tech entrepreneurs of Israel and around the world.

Ties with Local Industry: Tel-Hai incorporates hands-on experience, internships, and mentoring programs as part of the curricula in all its departments. One example of this is Tel-Hai Tech – an internship program which integrates computer science students in software companies during the course of their studies. Such programs result in employment upon graduation, allowing many graduates to settle in the Galilee with high salary job opportunities. 45% of employees of BMC Software's northern branch are Tel-Hai graduates. NVIDIA's northern branch (formerly Mellanox) began with recruiting eight Tel-Hai students, and now employs 90 developers, 90% of which are Tel-Hai graduates.

Encouraging and Supporting Entrepren-eurship: The Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Tel-Hai College was founded with the goal of encouraging students, graduates, faculty members and people from the community to submit proposals for original and innovative business initiatives. Selected initiatives receive grants of up to NIS 50,000, as well as support and coaching from academic and industry mentors.

Sowing Seeds of Ambition to Increase Social Mobility: When children grow up in an environment that does not see higher education as an option, their opportunities are limited. With an awareness that Tel-Hai brings change via education and academia, we have given classroom space and funding to Galilium, a regional partnership that provides extra-curricular science and technology programs for elementary and high school children. This partnership reduces gaps in education and raises ambition among local school children, increasing social mobility.

Students’ Integration into Communities: Students bring economic, communal and social value to towns. Beyond paying rent, working in local businesses and purchasing at local stores, our students bring new energy and talent to the local communities, working and volunteering with the elderly, and with the youth of Kiryat Shmona and the surrounding settlements.

Growing into the University of the Galilee at this critical moment will allow us to invest in the ecosystem anchors described above, as well as others, to expand our regional impact exponentially.

Reshaping the Galilee’s future

More than a century has passed since the famous battle of Tel-Hai, yet its Zionist ethos of perseverance and endurance still resonates in the Galilee. In the mid-1950s, an idealistic group of Galilean visionaries reclaimed Tel-Hai and established a School of Music and Arts. Throughout the years, academic tracks were added and by the 1970s, Tel-Hai was a regional college under the auspices of other institutes, until the 1990s, when it was recognized as an independent academic institution – Tel-Hai College.

Tel-Hai College has maintained the pioneering spirit of its founders and their sense of mission to develop the Galilee. We do so by means of becoming the leading academic institute that will put the peripheral North back on the map. Since 1996, Tel-Hai has been making higher education accessible to the Northern periphery, and attracting excellent faculty and researchers to a vibrant collaborative ecosystem that has made it one of Israel's leading colleges. Tel-Hai is now prepared to take the next step and become the University of the Galilee.

We are building the future every day in our classrooms, laboratories and communities and we can see that future just over the next hill. Join us as we write the next chapter in our region’s pioneering history and build the academic powerhouse that will reshape the future of the North: the University of the Galilee.

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