The Sunflower Center for Academic Resiliency

Stronger for Each Other

A new campus center coordinates initiatives that promote resilience and mental well-being, for the Bar-Ilan community and broader Israeli society.

A New State of Readiness

Thanks to a new campus network, when Bar-Ilan students, researchers, and even staff find themselves in moments of crisis, help is now as close as their own faculty. A joint initiative of the Student Counseling Service, the new Sunflower Center for Academic Resiliency—founded in the early months of the war—employs 17 “resilience liaisons” to connect individuals with the wealth of support services at the university. In addition, student-facing administrative divisions now boast center trainees who assist with complaints, sensitive situations, and special needs. These are just a few of the center’s multi-faceted efforts to create a campus culture of responsibility for others’ well-being. Or, as the center’s academic head Prof. Shiri Shinan-Altman of the Louis and Gabi Weisfeld School of Social Work puts it, to turn departments into communities.

Prof. Shiri Shinan-Altman

Prof. Rivka Tuval-Mashiach

Prof. Noa Vilchinsky

Nehama Heresh

“One of my students told me that just hearing that there was someone at Bar-Ilan whose job it is to help people in her situation made her feel hopeful and reassured,” recalls Shinan-Altman, who is head of the Master’s Degree Retraining Program in the Louis and Gabi Weisfeld School of Social Work. “To me, this response confirmed that beyond the support itself, there is real value in normalizing the work of coping with personal and national crises.”

Like the light-seeking sunflower chosen as its symbol, the University Resilience Center—established with funding from the Edmond de Rothschild Foundation and supported by the Israel Trauma Coalition—is led by Vice President for International Affairs and the Third Mission Prof. Rivka Tuval-Mashiach, Dean of the Division for Designated Programs Prof. Noa Vilchinsky, Shinan-Altman, and administrative head Nehama Harash. Together with a steering committee comprising members from across the university, the center harnesses Bar-Ilan’s extensive resources toward a shared mission of fostering recovery, grit, and meaning. Moreover, Prof. Shinan-Altman emphasizes that the center is not a top-down, but rather a bottom-up initiative, whose activities are all undertaken with input from and in collaboration with students, faculty, and staff, and all of which strive to respond to needs in the field. And not only those needs, she adds, that arose as a result of the current war. “We seek to create a new institutional state of preparedness, including for crises we can’t yet anticipate. This increases our chances of responding successfully, both as individuals and as a university,” she says.

In Hebrew, the University Resilience Center’s official name is the Center for Leadership and Management Resilience, whose abbreviation is “sunflower.” Chosen because the flowers famously turn toward the sun—symbolizing warmth, light, hope, and optimism—a sunflower head also produces an enormous number of seeds, which express the ripple effect of individual resilience on entire communities.

To ensure that the university is aware of the most up-to-date practices in treating trauma, the center works closely with the Israel Trauma Coalition, which represents the collective expertise of Israel’s leading trauma-management nonprofits and agencies, and collaborates with national and international resilience organizations to bring cutting-edge practices to the university. The center also aims to serve its Azrieli Faculty of Medicine campus in Safed, which it did recently through a staff workshop, and to develop an online knowledge hub with access to a range of resilience-building strategies. Finally, it has initiated a long-term project to produce a comprehensive and definitive body of Bar-Ilan emergency protocols, so that, in moments of crisis, every department knows what to do—and can maximize its efficacy. “One of the qualities that makes Bar-Ilan unique is its emphasis on forward-thinking action,” Shinan-Altman concludes. “The University Resilience Center places Bar-Ilan at the forefront of the field of community resilience, where tomorrow’s challenges are overcome by today’s commitment to mutual responsibility.”

Resilience as an Active Verb

Highlights from the more than 50 different activities the University Resilience Center undertook to strengthen the Bar-Ilan community in its first year:

Steering Committee

Chaired by Prof. Noa Vilchinsky, the steering committee brings representatives from across campus together to leverage their unique perspectives and expertise. Departments and divisions represented include the Office of the Dean of Students, the Human Resources Department, the Diversity and Gender Equity Commission, the Azrieli Faculty of Medicine, the Student Union, and the Office of the Campus Rabbi, among many others.

Communication Touchpoints

In the days before the Rosh Hashana holiday and Passover breaks, the center sent a letter to all faculty, students, and staff explaining that the holidays are especially challenging times for those coping with personal tragedy and reminding them that the center is there to help through a wide range of activities. The center plans to send similar letters to the Bar-Ilan community throughout the year, both before holidays and after events liable to trigger emotional difficulty.

Volunteer Network

Students from the Gabi and Louis Weisfeld School of Social Work and other faculties and departments established a network of volunteers across campus to help the center launch and expand the reach of its new projects.

Targeted Workshops

After identifying groups on campus that are often overlooked despite their likely need for emotional support—including spouses of reservists, injured veterans, and family members of reservists coping with PTSD—workshops were conducted to address their needs. Participants learned about post-traumatic symptoms and received practical tools to effectively cope with the new challenges brought by the war.

National Conference

In November 2024, the center convened at Bar-Ilan a conference of all 22 resilience centers at Israel’s colleges and universities. Featuring remarks by President Prof. Arie Zaban and a lecture by Prof. Rivka Tuval-Mashiach on how to nurture hope in wartime, the conference offered center teams the chance to share knowledge, ideas, and experience and advance the goal of bringing resilience into wider Israeli society. Next on the agenda: a scientific conference on resilience, science, and technology this July.

Signs of Strength: A Swords of Iron War Exhibit

Before the start of the current academic year, the University Resilience Center sent out a call for submissions to a Bar-Ilan community art exhibition about October 7th and the ongoing war. The response, says center academic head Prof. Shiri Shinan-Altman, “was overwhelming, and a testament to the real need we have to share not only our pain and trauma, but also our sense of hope and determination. The act of sharing with others is critical to the work of healing.” Featuring paintings, photographs, sculptures, and even videos and stories from students, researchers and staff from every faculty, the exhibit was featured in an article in the Israeli news site Walla and open to the public.