Ten Things You Should Know about the Holon Institute of Technology, HIT

1. Where are we?

The first thing is that Holon Institute of Technology, or HIT, as we call it, is in Holon.

Holon is a city in Israel, near Tel Aviv. It is flat, which makes it perfect for people who do not like climbing hills and acrophobics.

There is lots of free parking. Which is great because the institute doesn’t have much of a parking lot.

2. How good are we?

The Holon Institute of Technology is about the 4,700th best academic institute in the whole wide world, according to one web estimate.

That is not bad. We have a lot to aspire to.

There are about 6,000 colleges and universities below us in ranking. This is also comforting news.

3. We have a beautiful campus. You should come visit us.

One of our main attractions is an advanced 3D printing studio, run by Erez.

Actually it is owned by Erez. But he rents the space from us. He is a graduate.

And it is on campus.

Hila also wanted to be in the picture. She was my student, how could I resist?

4. We have the largest magnetic graffiti wall anywhere in academia in the whole world.

At least that’s what we say.

And no one has contradicted us. Yet.

5. Holes

We have the largest longstanding permanent hole in academia. It is about twenty years old. No one knows who dug it and why. Maybe archaeologists dug for bones of primitive designers. Maybe it is a metaphor for filling empty minds with knowledge. Maybe someone needed a lot of sand. Who knows?

A few months ago the south bank of the giant hole collapsed and a bus station slid backwards into the hole. That is not entirely bad. Only one person fell in and he was not badly hurt.

And we were finally in the news.

6. Our Aquarium

There are many aquariums (should I say aquaria?) on campuses around the world, but ours is the only one that has no water.

It is the gallery of the Faculty of Design. We love to host exhibitions of famous international designers from far and wide.

Most of them come from our faculty, though.

7. Our Science Park

Our Science Park, built by volunteers Hagai Cohen, Didi Vardi and others, has a harmonic swing (which does work, although the students do not know why or how)…

a wind turbine (which needs more wind)…

and a chaos machine (which is the most fun of all).

8. The Design Faculty

The design faculty is special. The students work very hard building all kinds of contraptions, and making sure all their right angles are right (90 degrees if you are not a designer or didn’t finish third grade) and all their curves are French.

Some of them are very talented. We even let one build a park bench on campus. It has no right angles.

93% of our students do not leave cigarette butts on the ground.

93% of our students do not smoke.

Someday we will be a smoke-free campus.
Someday.

9.   My Boss

I am now in the faculty of design. That is very cool. My boss is the dean, Professor Dana Arieli. She is an expert in art history.

I thought that I should mention her in my book. Hi, Dana.

10. The President

The President of the Holon Institute of Technology is Professor Eduard Yakubov. He is making a lot of changes. I got to keep half of my job. Meanwhile*.

*As of October, 2015, I am Shenkar College. Oh well….