On 20-21 November 2017, the coordination meeting and the national open conference on “Internationalization at national level” of Erasmus+ BOOST project /Boosting Armenian Universities’ Internationalisation Strategy and Marketing/ were held at the American University of Armenia.
The aim of the BOOST project /Boosting Armenian Universities’ Internationalisation Strategy and Marketing/ is to promote internationalization of Armenian HEIs through the development of national and institutional policy frameworks. The project coordinator is the Armenian State Pedagogical University after Khachatur Abovyan. The representatives of the Armenian partner HEIs (Armenian State Pedagogical University, American University of Armenia, Shirak State University, Vanadzor State University, Yerevan State Conservatory after Komitas), the Ministry of Education and Science of RA and the National Information Center for Academic Recognition and Mobility as well as the representatives of EU partner universities from Sweden, Spain, Portugal and Estonia participated in the meeting.
During the coordination meeting the activities carried out in the framework of the project were presented, the participants discussed the upcoming activities and the importance of the internationalization national platform creation. Three working groups were set up to develop the draft of the national strategy for internationalization, the national model for educational programs and the benchmarks for the internationalization standards.
In addition to the project partners, the representatives of the Armenian HEIs also participated in the national open conference on “Internationalization at national level”. The national conference was launched with welcome speeches of Deputy Minister of Education and Science of RA Vahram Mkrtchyan, AUA provost Mr. Randall Rhodes, ASPU Vice-Rector on International Affairs Ara Yeremyan and National Erasmus+ Office coordinator Lana Karlova.
The representatives of EU partner institutions presented the internationalization strategies of their countries. Afterwards, the participants of the conference split into groups, each group joined the facilitators determined beforehand during the coordination meeting and participated in world café method discussions on the internationalization issues. At the end of the discussions the facilitators briefly presented the participants’ feedback on the discussed topics
which will later contribute to the development of the internationalization strategy. The project is funded by the EU Erasmus+ program.
