Page 12 - HAC President Report 2022

Hani Abdel Jawad Hani is 30 years old, and works at the Jerusalem Branch of
Rowad, a Council for Higher Education program designed
Management of Service to increase access to higher education in the Arab, Druze,
Organizations, 2016 Circassian, and Bedouin communities. He and his team of 8
coordinators have helped thousands of young Arab students
begin their studies at Israeli institutions of higher education.

“I came to HAC after successfully completing a pre-academic program
at The Hebrew University, where I learned my first words of Hebrew.
Then I worked for a year washing dishes and cleaning to save money
to study at HAC. It was hard at first; I sat in the classroom and didn’t
understand what the teacher was saying, because I didn’t know
the terminology. But everyone at the College, including my Jewish
classmates, supported me. HAC prepared me for the work force, and
helped me bridge the cultural differences—like teaching me that it is
important to look a female interviewer in the eye, while in my culture,
that would be a sign of disrespect.”

Something special about HAC: “I was touched to discover that
there is a Moslem prayer room on campus.”

Tasneem Tasneem, 24, had just been accepted to a prestigious
Abu Odeh program in occupational therapy at Bethlehem University
when she decided to study computer science at HAC
B.Sc., Computer Science, 2020 instead. Not knowing a word of Hebrew, she began the Pre-
Academic Program at HAC in 2015. Today, Tasneem is a
Mobile and Full-Stack Web Developer at Delta Smarts, a
start-up in Jerusalem’s Jabel Mukabher neighborhood, which
is developing the first of a kind app for accountants and tax
consultants in three languages, adapted for use in Israel and
the Palestinian Authority. The first version will be released
very soon.

“The teachers at HAC are excellent and the best in their fields, so they
prepare you for the real world. I stayed in touch, and I continue to
consult with them. They are always ready to put their connections at
your disposal. They also helped me with things that were not directly
related to my studies. The campus was amazing—in our department,
despite the different cultures, we were all one big family, helping each
other.”

What was the most important thing that HAC gave you?
“Self-confidence. The lecturers believed in me even when I didn’t
believe in myself. I never imagined I could be a web developer, and
now I realize that this is my strength.”

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