As a senior, Noah Sandberg can remember what it was like to be involved in Jewish student life at Colorado School of Mines before this year.
“We had a good group of people, but it was really small,” he recalls. “For events on campus, we would have eight to 15 people, and we had only one on-campus Shabbat dinner each semester.”
In the past, Jewish students at Mines who wanted to attend weekly Shabbat services piled into a car and drove to University of Denver (DU). But that changed dramatically this year with the arrival of Hillel of Colorado at Mines.
“The biggest change is that we have Shabbat dinners on campus every other week,” says Sandberg, who is President of Mines Hillel. “It makes it so much more accessible for people. It feels like it’s your Jewish community and not someone else’s.”
Shira Teed, who is currently serving a dual role as Assistant Director of Hillel of Colorado and Campus Director of Mines Hillel, has been instrumental in building the Mines Hillel program.
“We are seeing anywhere from 25 to 50 students at events on a regular basis,” Teed says. “It’s a gift to me to be able to help these students and be someone they can look up to as a Jewish adult who is confident in being Jewish.”
Shira Teed at Mines Hillel Shabbat
“Shira is on our wavelength,” adds Sandberg with a laugh. “She is not an engineer, but she can sure hang with them!”
‘This is not what Shabbat is going to look like!’
Teed’s initial contact with Mines’ Jewish students came in 2023 when she met the students who were attending Shabbat dinners at DU. At the time, she oversaw Hillels at DU, Colorado State University, and the three schools on the Auraria Campus. Teed and Daniel Bennett, Executive Director of Hillel of Colorado, watched “the potential of Mines” for the next couple of years.
“What really put it over the edge for me was last year, when the Jewish students at Mines had issues with the leadership of other campus organizations,” Teed says. “The Jewish student leaders pled their case to us and pushed us to help them in a more significant way. Once we got on campus and got to know the students, it was a no-brainer.”
Starting in July, Teed took on the inaugural role of Mines Campus Director in a part-time capacity. She has brought financial support and new programming to the campus, focusing on relationship-building with the administration, programming, and logistics.
A Shabbat dinner at Mines Hillel
“They had been having Shabbat in a class lab, sitting at desks,” Teed says. “I came in and said, ‘This is not what Shabbat is going to look like!’”
She set out to elevate the Shabbat experience, finding a space with a kitchen on campus where she can bring in Kosher catered food served after student-led Shabbat services. Gone are the desks. Now, Teed is teaching students how to set a Shabbat table.
“That is what we do at Hillel,” she says. “This is the first time these students have left home and everything their parents taught them. We help them figure out how they are going to be their own kind of Jewish when they leave college.”
In addition to Shabbat dinners, Teed held a second night of Rosh Hashanah dinner, Havdalah programs, and an October 7th anniversary event. She brings in bagels on a regular basis, plans hikes, and has developed educational programs. She takes students on coffee dates to get to know them, and when new Jewish students move in, they are welcomed with a bag of Mines Hillel swag.
Noah Sandberg (second from right) and Mines Hillel Board
All this hard work has resulted in a significant increase in Jewish student participation. Teed believes there are about 300 Jewish students at Mines, and she has met more than 100 of them. Of those, more than 30 have returned for at least six events this academic year.
“Six is a magic number,” she says. “We have seen a huge increase in students who are coming back over and over again, and those students are really part of the community.”
Of particular interest is the increase in engaged female students. Thirty percent of the students at Mines are female. Before this year, only one or two out of 15 students at Shabbat would be women. Now, 40 percent of the Jewish students at Hillel events are women.
The friction with other student organizations has “calmed down,” Teed says. “Making a relationship with the administration has made all the difference.” In fact, the Vice President of Student Life at Mines is now in the early phases of working with Teed to bring anti-Israel and antisemitism training to faculty and staff through the Academic Engagement Network.
“They understand how important it is to hear voices of Jewish students,” Teed says. “That would not have happened without the relationship we have built.”
Noah’s perspective, in his own words
After October 7th, we saw a massive wave of interest in engaging Jewishly at Mines. It also seemed like there were more Jewish students coming to Mines, perhaps because the campus environment felt safe overall, especially compared to a lot of other universities.
We started to see a surge of interest last year, but when Hillel of Colorado came on campus, that really accelerated. I think some of the credit also goes to the students who have been more willing to put themselves out there.
Rosh Hashanah at Mines Hillel
This year, we had our first on-campus Rosh Hashanah dinner, and there were more than 50 people. We ran out of chairs! It felt surreal, but it’s something that Mines has been ready for.
It’s amazing with Shira and Hillel of Colorado because now we have the resources and funding to do fun activities most weeks. In addition to having a good time, we put emphasis on having regular services which we never had before. They are student-run, and it’s impressive to me that the student leaders have built it from the ground up.
Before this year, we were just scraping by. Now we can grow. We are still small but scrappy….and we are getting to be less small.