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Hillel International today launches Hillel U – a cutting-edge professional continuing education program that will be among the most extensive in the Jewish communal world. Hillel U will enhance Hillel’s ability to retain top tier talent, and allow it to better serve students on hundreds of campuses across the country and around the world. The program, which is initially funded with $10 million in new investments, will launch at the Hillel International Global Assembly in Orlando next month. Thanks in part to a launch gift from The Leonard J. Kaplan Fund of the Jewish Foundation of Greensboro, Hillel U will build community and collaboration among the 1,000 professionals working for Hillel on campus and its Schusterman International Center through in-person and online courses, convenings and immersive experiences.

Laura Yares, Ph.D., the Director of Educational Research and Innovation at Hillel International, where she directs the Ezra Fellowship tells about the Ezra Fellowship and its effect on Hillel International: Beginning two years ago, Hillel began to pioneer a new model for its engagement professionals, one which thought about these young adults as more than Jewish concierges. Hillel’s Ezra Fellowship was founded to develop a cadre of engagement professionals who were not only engaging, but were also engaged with their own Judaism. The goal of the fellowship is to develop young Jewish professionals who can provide a role model of a young adult living an engaged Jewish life. Since its first cohort in 2014, the Ezra Fellows initiative has placed 35 fellows on campuses across North America. Named for the biblical scribe who bought the Torah outside, to the water pump in the middle of the market place, Ezra fellows are trained through an extensive fellowship learning program to play the role of a Jewish peer educator on campus.

At Hillel International, we know the importance of guiding students on their college journey. As they question their beliefs and assumptions, and forge an adult identity of their own, Hillel helps students explore Jewish life and make meaning. Periodic evaluations have demonstrated the significance of Hillel’s work. However, Hillel has never attempted to regularly measure the effectiveness of campus Hillels, nor did we possess the methodologies to do so. Until now.

Over 50 Hillel professionals met the first week of June at Capital Camps for the first Hillel Educators Kallah. Attendees represented the gamut of Hillel roles, directors, engagement professionals, campus rabbis, and more. Regardless of title or job description, we consider ourselves Jewish educators. But we were stuck when asked if we really consider ourselves educators – what was our pedagogy? What was our method and practice? How could it be assessed, and indeed, are we even able to really demonstrate our successes? It became clear during our discussion that if Hillel staff, regardless of academic training, are going to consider ourselves Jewish educators, we need a method and practice that will merge the central elements, or commonplaces, of Judaism (God, Torah and Israel) with the central elements of education (subject, learner, educator and environment). What would be a curriculum that could be shared by Hillel movement? Even further, how would we measure the successful implementation of that content?