KHACHATUR ABOVYAN ARMENIAN STATE PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY

A few days ago, the coordination meeting of the Erasmus+ BOOST programme /Boosting Strategy and Marketing for Internationalisation of Armenian Universities/ and the open national conference on the topic of “Internationalisation on National Level” was held at the American University of Armenia.

The Armenian State Pedagogical University was the BOOST Project Coordinator; the aim of the Project was to foster and support the process of further internationalisation of the RA Higher Education system by drafting framework and tools relevant to the National and Institutional policy.

Among the participants of the coordination meeting were the RA project partners from the Pedagogical University, the American University of Armenia, University of Shirak, Vanadzor State University after H.Tumanyan, Komitas State Conservatory of Yerevan, the RA Ministry of ES, National Information Centre on Academic Recognition and Mobility, as well as representatives of the EU partner universities from Spain, Estonia, Sweden, and Portugal.
During the meeting, the ASPU Head of Department of International Cooperation Christina Tsaturyan introduced the project achievements, further processes, and the national strategy plan of internationalisation.

Likewise, she referred to the establishment of national internationalisation platform and the acting legislative regulatory framework.

The opening remarks of the conference about “Internationalisation on National Level” were made by the RA Deputy - Minister of Education and Science Vahram Mkrtchyan, the Vice-President of the American University of Armenia Randall Rhodes, the ASPU Vice –Rector for Employment and Internationalisation Matters Ara Yeremyan, as well as the Coordinator of the Erasmus+ office in Armenia Lana Karlova.

Furthermore, the representatives of partner universities in Spain, Portugal, Estonia and Sweden referred to the internationalisation strategies in their countries.

In the second part of the conference, the participants split into groups, and with the help of facilitators through the World Café Method discussed the following questions in regards with the internationalisation strategy, including the presence of international environment at universities, /joint postgraduate initiatives, knowledge of foreign languages/, creating cooperation edges with international research organizations, fostering inbound and outbound mobility programmes, involvement of the RA higher education establishments in the best universities ranking lists.
At the end of discussions, the facilitators briefly presented the participants’ feedback on the discussed topics.
The project is funded by the EU Erasmus+ programme.