Engineering Resilience, From October 7 to Iran: Supporting Students in Wartime

For the past two and a half years, Israel’s students have been living through a reality that defies any traditional definition of “student life.” They have studied between sirens, taken exams between reserve duty rotations, and tried to build their futures while their country has been under constant threat — from October 7 through today’s ongoing war with Iran.

At Afeka Academic College of Engineering in Tel Aviv, we have come to understand a fundamental truth and a moral obligation: If we are to educate excellent engineers, those who will be entrusted with rebuilding and shaping this country’s future, we must first sustain them as human beings. Resilience is not a byproduct of education. It is a prerequisite for it.

Every single one of our students has been affected, carrying the psychological and financial weight of an ongoing war. Beyond that shared burden, Afeka has faced an unprecedented reality: more than 40% of our students have been called up for reserve duty since October 7, one of the highest proportions among academic institutions in Israel. Many served in combat units, some were wounded, all of them return carrying scars that go far beyond an academic gap to close. This completely redefines academic life, and it requires a profoundly different response.

Early in the war, we made a clear decision: No student would fall behind because of disruptions caused by the war. Through our AsOne Wartime Emergency Fund, we built a comprehensive support system designed not only to preserve academic continuity, but to protect student well-being in the broadest sense. We expanded mental health services, embedded dedicated reservist coordinators, and ensured that every student navigating military service had a real human point of contact and not just an institutional process. We also understood quickly that flexibility was crucial in supporting the success of our students: We moved to fully hybrid learning, introduced multiple exam opportunities, and created condensed courses throughout the year, so that students could keep progressing even when their lives had been put on hold.

And yet, some of what mattered most was harder to measure. War fractures routine, and routine is one of the strongest anchors for mental wellbeing. Accordingly, alongside the systems and structures, we focused on something quieter: restoring a sense of normalcy. Peer learning groups, faculty mentoring, and continuous academic advising — not as bureaucratic services, but as human connections. Our goal was simple: to replace chaos with continuity.

But even with all these systems in place, we were painfully reminded that some struggles are invisible. Over the past year, we lost two of our students who had returned from extended service in Gaza. Though they came back, they were also carrying wounds that could not be seen on any scan. In the aftermath, we sat with their families and friends and asked a difficult but necessary question: What might have helped? They spoke not of complex interventions, but of the need for a quiet, protected space, where a returning soldier could sit, breathe, listen to music, and begin to decompress.

That conversation led us to create what we now call the Quiet Tent. This space is being built as a calm, supportive environment where students can receive personal guidance, participate in mind-body workshops, and engage in activities that help rebuild resilience at their own pace. It reflects a broader shift in how we think about care, making it accessible, human-centered, and woven into the fabric of campus life.

The Quiet Tent was born from loss. And loss taught us that coming home and coming back are two very different things. We have come to understand that returning from war, even when the uniform comes off and the classroom door opens, is rarely a clean transition. Reintegration is slow, nonlinear, and often invisible. Our responsibility does not end when a student re-enrolls. It ends only when they have truly returned — to stability, to purpose, and to themselves.

Mental health support cannot be treated as a temporary response to a crisis. It must be seen as an ongoing investment in our students, in their futures, and in the society they will help build. The young men and women sitting in our classrooms are the engineers who will design Israel’s defenses, rebuild its infrastructure, and drive its innovation in the years ahead. Ensuring that they are able to return, recover, and complete their education is not only an act of compassion, but also a national priority.

At Afeka, we have made that commitment explicit: zero students dropping out because of the war. No student should lose their future because they answered the call to serve their country.

As Israel continues to confront regional threats, we are reminded that national strength is not measured only in military capacity. It is measured in the people who will defend what must be protected, rebuild what has been damaged, and design what has never yet existed. Our students are that human capital, and investing in their resilience is a strategic imperative. Afeka’s commitment is clear: we will not simply educate through this war, we will emerge from it with a generation that is stronger, more resilient, and deeply rooted, one that chooses to build this country because it believes it is worth building.