Enhancing the Social Characteristics and Public Responsibility of Israeli Teaching through a Student-HEI Alliance (ESPRIT)
The Tempus-ESPRIT project was developed to assess the social responsibility of higher education and clarify its features, as well as to test models for its enhancement in Israeli universities. The project ran from 2013-2016.
The project’s overall goal is to analyze, map and strengthen the social and public roles of higher education institutions in Israel. To this end, three main pillars were pursued. At an initial phase a mapping exercise was conducted in order to shed light on the level of social engagement of Israeli students/faculty and their perceptions towards social responsibility. A second pillar involved the development of models and guidelines for the design of curriculum with a social engagement component. A digital platform was also produced to serve as a resource center and contact point to promote dialogue between faculty working on these types of courses. Finally, the project saw the development and testing of a Social Benchmarking Tool (SBT) to assess and compare academic institutions according to their social missions. Together, these three pillars aimed to sharpen the understanding of social responsibility in academic institutions as well as enhance this feature in the partner institutions.
Project partners included:
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Tel-Hai Academic College
National Union of Israeli Students
University of Brighton (UK)
Masaryk University (CZ)
University of Santiago de Compostela (ES)
The European Students' Union (BE)
