Israel Arts and Science Academy

The Israel Arts and Science Academy occupies the Schusterman Campus in Jerusalem, named for philanthropists Lynn and Charles Schusterman.[1] The campus sits between the Malha mall and the Biblical Zoo, at 1 Kulitz Street, and covers ten acres.[1][2] Its facilities include art studios, music rooms, science and computer laboratories, classrooms, an auditorium, a library, a fitness center, a gymnasium, and dormitory buildings.[2]

The school was established by and is owned by the Israel Center for Excellence through Education (ICEE).[3] It is a national boarding high school operating at a university-level standard, with four departments: sciences, arts, humanities, and music.[4][5] The school's own materials describe its high school as the first residential institution in Israel designed specifically for gifted students, though this claim has not been independently corroborated in outside sources.[2]

A non-residential middle school opened in 2017 in Jerusalem's Kiryat Menachem neighborhood, serving grades 6–9 and students from Jerusalem and surrounding areas, expanding ICEE's educational footprint beyond the original high-school program.[2]

IASA opened in September 1990 after five years of intensive planning in Israel and abroad. The planning considered what a residential high school could offer gifted students beyond or differently from a conventional day school, with particular attention to the potential of a "total learning community" in which students with varied talents and backgrounds would live and learn together.[6]

Co-founder Robert H. Asher, his wife Mary Jane Asher, and Israeli educator Raphi Amram were driving figures behind the institution.[1] They developed the idea for an interdisciplinary school founded on excellence, leadership, and public service, and spent roughly three years lobbying, fundraising, planning, and building the institution before classes began.[1] Institutional biographies give two dates for the establishment of the Association for Excellence in Education, now ICEE: 1989 in Asher's biography and 1987 in Amram's biography.[7] IASA itself was founded in 1990, and the dates may reflect different institutional milestones.[7]

The school followed a needs-blind admissions policy from an early stage. Asher said students should first be accepted on merit, after which the school would work to provide whatever financial assistance was needed.[1] In some years, more than 90 percent of high-school dormitory residents received at least some financial aid.[1] The school later expanded to include the middle school described above, while the wider ICEE grew to run camps, develop curricula, train teachers, and organize enrichment programs in approximately 250 Israeli schools.[1]

By June 1994, four years after opening, IASA enrolled 182 students drawn from 70 Israeli communities.[6] Among them were 28 Russian immigrants and 14 Arab-Israeli students; the broader student body included Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Druze, as well as students from kibbutzim and moshavim.[6] This diversity of ethnic background, socioeconomic class, and religious commitment — concentrated in a single residential campus — led to the description of the student body as a "majority of minorities."[6]

The school draws students from across Israel, and its reported geographic reach has grown over time. In 2009, it had 218 resident students.[8] In 2016, one account reported 263 students from more than 100 localities, while another gave a figure of 260 students from 110 localities.[9][10] In 2025, students were reported to come from more than 120 localities.[11] These figures reflect different points in time and may also reflect different counting methods; the sources do not reconcile the variations.

The school enrolls approximately 80 new students each year.[12] Its student body includes secular and religious Jews, Muslims, Christians, and Druze, representing different sectors of Israeli society.[5][3] Students from these backgrounds live, learn, and grow together on campus.[2]

Approximately 80 percent of IASA's high-school students live in the boarding program, while a small number of local Jerusalem students commute from home.[2][13] Tuition in 2016 was reported as close to NIS 3,000 a month, and the principal at that time said roughly half the students did not pay full tuition or paid nothing at all.[10] The school's admissions process is intended to allow applicants from diverse backgrounds to demonstrate their abilities without regard to socioeconomic, geographic, or religious considerations.[2]

Admission to IASA's high school is for students entering grade 10, while a separate admissions pathway exists for the middle school beginning in grade 7.[5] The three-stage process comprises an examination day, a personal interview, and a candidates' workshop.[5] Applicants apply to the track — science, music, visual arts, or humanities — that most interests them and are expected to demonstrate marked intellectual curiosity and talent.[5]

In 2016, principal Itai Banovitch described motivation and a desire to learn as central to what the admissions process sought to identify.[9] Selection drew on multiple factors — students' interests, writing, strengths, and learning habits — rather than relying chiefly on a standardized giftedness test.[9] ICEE CEO Hezki Arieli similarly said in 2009 that the organization emphasized demonstrated ability, motivation, and curiosity rather than measuring excellence by IQ alone.[8]

IASA's curriculum is organized into four specialist tracks — sciences, music, visual arts, and humanities — each structured in a university-style format that emphasizes study, research, and practical experience.[5] The school operates on the premise that gifted students need a different curriculum, not simply an accelerated version of a standard one.[6] Where Israeli secondary students typically prepare for the bagrut, or national secondary school achievement tests, the Ministry of Education permits IASA to use alternative curricular procedures, including evaluation mechanisms that require ministry approval; supervised research projects may substitute for bagrut examinations in some subject areas.[6]

The sciences track centers on in-depth study of a primary experimental science — biology, chemistry, or physics — alongside mathematics studied at the five-unit level, and options including a second science, computer science, or computational science.[14] A compulsory science-ethics course is required in grade 11.[14] Independent research forms a significant part of the program: students may complete a five-unit final project under the guidance of an academic researcher, and biology students may conduct their projects in university research laboratories with graduate-student supervision.[14] IASA also runs a regional astrophysics class for grades 11–12 in partnership with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in which a selected group of up to 20 students undertakes research projects and astronomical-observation field trips.[14]

The humanities track exposes students to texts from Western and Jewish cultures — ranging from Homer, Plato, and Freud to the Mishnah, the Talmud, the New Testament, and the Quran — and requires completion of a research paper under expert supervision.[4] Humanities students study a third language, Arabic or Latin, in addition to Hebrew and English. Reported offerings have also included Greek and Roman history, discrete mathematics, genetic engineering, oceanography, and philosophy and ethics of science.[4][9]

The music track encompasses composition, orchestration, performance, and a weekly department concert.[4] Musician Karin Ben-Yosef recalled that the track included improvisation workshops in jazz, pop, and rock alongside composition and performance opportunities; her compositions were performed by the school ensemble, and she credited the experience with giving her the confidence to explore music rather than only play written notes.[15]

The visual arts track combines practical work across media — drawing, sculpture, photography, and video art — with art history study and a final research project.[4] The school's interdisciplinary approach sought high-level connections between arts and sciences: arts students were not offered watered-down science courses, nor were science students given low-level appreciation courses.[6] Its humanities curriculum included intensive study and discussion of moral, ethical, and aesthetic questions.[6]

Examples of specific courses offered include Latin, composition and orchestration, quantum-computer programming, and interdisciplinary art, although the course list may change.[5] Students across tracks engage with subjects such as philosophy, ethics of science, and community responsibility as part of the broader curriculum.[9]

The boarding program is not treated as a supplement to academic life but as an integral part of the educational model.[13] Students arrive at age 15 and spend three years on campus, accompanied by professional educational staff who live there alongside them.[13] The school describes community life as cultivating tolerance, openness, respect, leadership, and social involvement among students from different religious, cultural, and geographic backgrounds.[13]

The school identified three categories of educators: full-time teachers responsible for core disciplines; guides or counselors who oversee residential and informal aspects of the program; and part-time specialists, often performers, producers, university professors, or doctoral students, who contribute to specialized instruction.[6] All staff engage in curriculum development as an ongoing commitment.[6] Counselors also addressed personal and social difficulties, including the heated academic competition that can arise among highly motivated students.[6]

Residential activities extended well beyond the classroom. Student recitals and presentations, events with outside performers and experts, readings, drama, videos, and debates were part of campus life, as was unstructured leisure time.[6] Students had opportunities to engage with Jerusalem's broader cultural scene.[6] A "Knowing Israel" program took students to biblical, archaeological, natural, and historical sites, as well as neighborhoods and official buildings in and around Jerusalem.[6]

Student committees organized campus life across a wide range of activities, including theatre, music, chess, dance, journalism, and environmental sustainability.[2] Students also took responsibility for practical matters such as the auditorium, supplies, activity budgets, and communication between students and school management, gaining increasing ownership of campus governance as the years progressed.[2] In 2016, 50 twelfth-grade students had taken part in a summer seminar preparing them for leadership roles in the coming school year, and 40 were expected to coordinate social activities.[9]

Community service is described by the school as central to its ethos and is required throughout all three years of the high-school program.[4][2] IASA's Crown Community Service Program places students in volunteer roles on Tuesday afternoons with groups including children and youth, older adults, and people with disabilities.[2] The school frames this work as allowing students to apply their abilities to help others while developing an understanding of societal needs.[2]

The boarding-school program includes a weekly, sustained personal meeting between each participating student and a child or adult outside the school, intended to build a meaningful relationship over time rather than deliver one-off assistance.[13] By 2016, 25 social-activity frameworks had been organized around Jerusalem.[9] Community contribution was considered part of students' education even when it did not count toward matriculation credit.[9]

IASA takes a distinctive approach to Holocaust commemoration. Rather than joining the conventional Israeli school trip to concentration camps in Poland, the school substituted a week-long journey around Israel that incorporated Holocaust museums, meetings with survivors, and discussions with scholars.[16] The program focused on the Holocaust's impact on Israeli society and on subsequent generations of Israelis.[16]

Principal Etay Benovich emphasized survivor testimony as a central component of the program.[16] In 2016, students met 90-year-old survivor Mickey Goldman, whose experiences at Auschwitz and at the Eichmann trials made a strong impression on participants.[16] The itinerary included visits to Yad Vashem, the Ghetto Fighters' House Museum, and the Mashoa Institute, alongside study of the Eichmann trial.[9]

Student research at IASA has on occasion extended beyond the campus and into real-world applications. In 2007, eleventh-grade chemistry students Hirit Yishlach and Gili Bilous adapted a reaction from a chemistry-class article to improve the visibility of latent fingerprints.[17] Israel Police's forensic laboratory was considering or preparing to adopt the technique as a field tool, and the work was part of a broader collaboration between ICEE and the police.[17]

At the 2015 Intel-Israel Young Scientists Competition, IASA students won multiple prizes among Jerusalem finalists. Noam Yungerman and Kedem Snir received first-place prizes for projects in life sciences and mathematics, and language coding, respectively.[18] Noa Chen received second place for a project examining the Ashera goddess in biblical times and the times of the Sages, and Ta'ili Hardiman received a special prize for work on the aesthetics of evil in cinema.[18]

The school's Curriculum Development Unit created computer software and multimedia programs, much of it programmed by students themselves.[6] Named examples from the early 1990s include Nitsan, intended to improve self-expression and reading comprehension; software for listening comprehension designed for music students; and a multimedia program titled Sumaria and Acadia.[6] In 1994, seven graduates worked in the unit and passed their expertise to 12 new participants.[6]

In 2025, approximately 2,300 academy alumni were reported, along with several career figures: roughly 60 percent were described as entrepreneurs or leaders in high-tech and biotech, about 20 percent as working in medicine, and about 12 percent as academic researchers.[11] No methodology or reference date accompanied these percentages, so they should be understood as reported figures rather than independently verified outcomes.[11]

IASA established at least one formal international partnership: the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics and IASA signed an agreement to develop joint curricula and activities in world leadership.[19] The precise date of the agreement and further details about the joint programs were not specified in the available source.[19]

Palestinian-Israeli author and columnist Sayed Kashua is among the school's identified alumni, having attended the Jerusalem boarding school.[20] The school presents residential community life as a means of fostering responsibility, belonging, leadership, and social involvement among students from varied backgrounds.[13]

In 2014, several dozen IASA graduates published a letter urging current students to refuse military service, making political claims about the army and Israeli policies in the aftermath of that summer's Gaza conflict.[21] The school responded by noting that it encouraged meaningful community contribution and critical thinking, reported that more than 97 percent of its high-school students joined the Israel Defense Forces and that many served as officers, and stated that students could choose their own lawful path according to conscience and faith.[21]

The school's founders also faced accusations of elitism, a charge that sat in tension with the institution's needs-blind admissions policy and the documented socioeconomic and geographic diversity of its student body.[1] IASA is highly selective but also provides substantial financial assistance, while public statements by its leadership have emphasized curiosity and motivation over applicants' backgrounds or academic pedigrees.[1][10]