BGU | PRESIDENT'S REPORT 2024

CHANGING TACK AFTER OCTOBER 7 After October 7, we moved quickly to support our students through grants and dorm fee relief; additional scholarships and financial support; psychological support; and tutoring and mentoring. We expanded the Reservists Support Office. We created a detailed plan for supporting our students who are serving in the reserves to ensure they are not left behind by repeating courses in the spring, adding a summer semester, various dispensations, guidance, and more. The University also mobilized to support employees affected by the events of October 7 and the ensuing war: We established a support fund and gave grants to displaced employees, and in some cases housed them in our dorms. We allowed employees to work remotely at first and, later, ran a daycare center so that employees with young children could return to campus. We funded nineteen student, staff, and alumni initiatives in support of the war efforts. Our students To improve the overall student experience, we invested in improving the campus environment in terms of security, dining experience, classrooms and learning spaces, and more. We revamped public spaces and created numerous seating areas across campus, and improved the dorm living experience. Thanks to the generosity of Sylvan Adams, the renovated and expanded sports center improves the student experience as well. More broadly, we initiated the improvement of organizational service-related processes across the University and set ourselves the goal of improving employee satisfaction and investment in the University, to be able to attract the best researchers and support staff. This included establishing a new organizational communications unit, investing in new digital platforms to streamline bureaucratic and other organizational processes that improve the work environment. We redoubled our efforts to make BGU more attractive to researchers: We invested in artificial intelligence infrastructure that places the University at the field’s vanguard; we established the Guzik Center for Advanced Microscopy at the Ilse Katz Institute for Nanoscale Science & Technology; and developed a new comprehensive one-stop portal for researchers, where they can manage research budgets and everything else they need. I am happy to report that the University was also successful in increasing government income derived

were everywhere, volunteering in almost every capacity imaginable, as were many staff members. The University supported employee volunteering by absorbing the cost of one day’s absence volunteering per employee. Likewise, we did not forget our obligation to the Negev, and, indeed, were reminded of just how important BGU is to the welfare and resilience of this region. We hosted a civilian relief logistics center on campus; our campuses in Eilat and Beer-Sheva opened their classrooms to entire schools from displaced communities, or those that weren’t protected from missile attacks. The Eilat campus housed and fed families displaced from their homes. Both the Eilat and Beer-Sheva campuses hosted soldiers and medical personnel in dorms and classrooms. The $12 million we were able to raise from our friends and supporters through the Emergency Response Campaign made all this possible.

from the “research model,” which is based on research outcomes. BGU’s share of government research funding has increased from 12.3% in 2022-23 to 13.5% in 2023-24, despite the addition of another university to the pool. Efforts to increase grant submissions overall and improve those submissions are also beginning to bear fruit.

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Ben-Gurion University of the Negev