Diversity and Gender Equity Commission
Strategic Investment
A research-based pilot for helping close gaps between first-generation students and their peers is ensuring that whatever their starting points, all Bar-Ilan students go the distance.
Filling in the Blanks
Last year, when the Mina and Everard Goodman Faculty of Life Sciences turned to the Diversity and Gender Equity Commission for help advancing its first-generation graduate students, commission coordinator Dr. Yael Bar-Tzedek was confident she knew what to do. Only a year and half into its existence, the commission—which, guided by the principles of social justice and equal opportunity, promotes the success of all groups in Israeli society—had already conducted extensive research on the nearly 1,000 Bar-Ilan students who are the first in their families to pursue a degree. A main takeaway from participants’ in-depth interviews and questionnaires was the impact of mentorship in cultivating a sense of belonging in academia. Crucially, mentorship also plays an important role in helping students develop “soft skills,” or the skills in time management, long-term planning, and communication that are critical to academic performance—and which first-generation students often lack, even years into their studies.
“It’s understandable to assume that if first-generation students have completed a bachelor’s degree, they’ve already gained the skills that were missing when they first came to the university,” explains Bar-Tzedek. “What our study showed, however, is that absent a concerted effort, significant gaps still remain between first-generation and non-first-generation students at every degree level. That’s the bad news. The great news is that, as our study also showed, the programs Bar-Ilan provides to address this gap, such as mentoring for bachelor’s degree students through the Dean of Students Office, can and do make a tremendous difference.”
Prof. Orna Sasson-Levy
Dr. Yael Bar-Tzedek
To test Bar-Tzedek’s hypothesis, the commission—led by inaugural commissioner Prof. Orna Sasson-Levy of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology—designed a pilot program in the life sciences faculty that matched 11 first-generation master’s and doctoral students with a mentor from either academia or industry. Along with regular one-on-one consultations with their mentors, students also met once a month as a group for lectures, skills-building workshops, and open discussions. The results were overwhelming: Upon the pilot’s conclusion, participants felt the program had been so helpful, they offered to act as mentors themselves to the next, scaled-up cohorts throughout Bar-Ilan faculties. Yet when the commission proposed segmenting future cohorts into still more targeted groups, the students balked, insisting that differences in gender, background, and even nationality pale in comparison to the strength of their shared first-generation experience.
“We know from our research that these students are a group unto themselves, defined first and foremost by having come from Israel’s geographic and socio-economic peripheries,” Bar-Tzedek says. “What we didn’t realize was just how formative their first-generation background is to their identities. We thought we were ‘merely’ helping individual students succeed in academia, and we were. But we also enabled deep and supportive friendships,” she concludes. “Ultimately, and to our great delight, we helped advance a ‘shared space.’ These spaces, which create opportunities for connection and exposure to different experiences, cultures, and ways of thinking, are the way to create a stronger campus and Israeli society.”
The Push Toward Excellence: Support for Minority Groups
To ensure that the full potential present in Israeli society is reflected in its student body and faculty—particularly in those fields, such as the exact and life sciences, considered national priorities—the Diversity and Gender Equity Commission also identified key areas where financial, technical, or psychological support can keep members of minority groups—women, graduates of the Haredi educational system, students of the Arab society, and students of Ethiopian descent—in academia and on a path to impact.
Of the 40 female Bar-Ilan students who received a postdoctoral scholarship since 2012 and have completed their research, 17 have gone on to faculty positions at other Israeli universities, and seven are now full-time members of the Bar-Ilan faculty.
