Over the past year, we’ve seen the campus gradually returning to life following a prolonged period of disruptive pandemic. The Public Affairs and Resource Development Division (PARD) has conducted both physical and virtual events and ceremonies, including the December 2021 Board of Governors virtual meeting. The Division has also planned and orchestrated the physical, week-long, festive BOG meeting of June 2022, three years after the last meeting was held on campus.
The VP of External Relations and Resource Development, in collaboration with the Executive VP of Research, has been instrumental in engaging multinational corporations with the Technion to encourage research collaboration and investment, as well as mutual technological and academic activities.
The David and Janet Polak Visitors Center has seen thousands of visitors from all over the world, from leading global industry partners such as PTC and Google and high-level delegations, including the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, following the Abraham Accords.
The Division has put greater emphasis on Technion alumni in Israel and around the globe, conducting alumni webinars and meetings. Such activities have led to an increase in the number of alumni who are engaged with and donate to the Technion and forge industry-academia ties through their respective companies.
In recent months, we’ve been working diligently on a strategic plan for the Technion’s Centennial, which includes dozens of recommendations for events, conferences, and collaborative projects, outlining a comprehensive campaign leading up to 2024.
Overall, we’ve had a very successful year in terms of monetary donations. We’ve produced hundreds of project proposals and reports for philanthropic donors and thousands of scholarships and fellowship personal thank-you letters.
Our local and global public relations efforts – including traditional and social/digital media – generated dozens of press releases published over the past year (in Hebrew and English), monthly e-newsletters in both languages, magazines, videos, and brochures. We continued to disseminate news, articles, and videos and publish daily posts on our Hebrew and English social media platforms.
Our social media platforms in both languages continue to grow. We now have hundreds of thousands of followers on multiple channels, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn, which has seen tremendous growth following its 2021 revamp.
However, as we continued to operate under the uncertainty of COVID-19 waves over the past year, the Division faced ongoing human resource challenges, including recruitment and retention.