Dear Faculty members,
Wishing us all a successful academic year. This is an opportunity to thank you for your great efforts in preparing for remote teaching, for your creativity and your commitment to excellence in teaching. The ongoing increase in the students’ reported satisfaction from studying at the Hebrew University, and the additional increase in the number of students (an increase of 12% in first year students) suggest that the students also appreciate your efforts.
This is also an opportunity to thank so many of you for once again volunteering in the “mentoring” program for first-year students; and for receiving the consent of almost all faculty members (97%) to record their classes. These two examples suggest that it is preferable to rely on the faculty’s intrinsic commitment to academic excellence rather than on coercion. Thanks also to the leadership of the Faculty members’ Union, for their ongoing cooperation and mainly for inducing the management, and me personally, to improve.
We are now preparing for the partial return to on-campus teaching. Teaching labs will resume, subject to government regulations on November 1st; and we aim that other courses will resume on-campus teaching within a few weeks, relying mostly on advanced diagnostics, in cooperation with the Faculty of Medicine and Hadassah.
Best,
Barak Medina, Rector