BGU Open House

Today (27 Feb 2014) was Ben Gurion University's open house for the Fall 2014 freshman.  Here is the billboard near my apartment:

(It says "Open Day 27 February").  The sciences and engineering information tables were held in a lobby of a new building, that opens into a submerged plaza:

The orange flag is the BGU flag.  I guess I'll have to get an orange t-shirt.  Not my color.  But it's their color.

The structural engineering orientation was held in a lecture room with a capacity of ~100:

By the time it started, I think there were 150 students (with only a few parents or spouses) in the room.   It was totally SRO.  People sitting on stairs.  People standing.  Wow.  Dr. Vilnay, the department chair did the entire orientation and Q/A.

He teased me (privately) about finally studying structural engineering because I was sitting in the audience.  We laughed. 

So let me take you on my spiritual journey during the orientation:  I was thinking about how small Israel is, and that the Technion graduates about this many civil (not strictly structural like BGU) each year.  That's a big influx to the profession.  Why will Israel need 150 more structural engineers in four years?  Hmm.  Then I thought back to an earlier post about construction around Beer Sheva (1/22/14), and the news reports about the horrendous anti-Semitism in the Ukraine and France.  The right-wing radio hosts are just crying out to those communities to make aliyah ("Do you need more of a reason to move to Israel than what's going on right now??").  Well, G-d willing, many of those people will immigrate to Israel, and they will need a place to live. And shop.  And have transportation systems that work well.  Who designs apartment buildings?  Well, architects start, but the structural and construction engineers finish the designs.  I thought again about Isaiah 11:12, and became immediately grateful that I may be able to help this department just a little bit in producing the engineers that will be needed to build everything in this country.