American University of Armenia Sets Sights on Global Reach

So far, the foreign exchange students come primarily from the US and specifically from California.

During a visit to the office of the Mirror-Spectator, he and Lorraine Alexander, AUA’s vice president for development and external affairs, spoke about his hopes for the future of the university, as well as the challenges that he and his predecessors have met.

The purpose of the trip, Alexander said, is to build an endowment of $50 million, which would give the university a strong financial foundation as it goes into the future.

Of that chunk, the US government donated $11.5 million in 2006 as part of its American Schools and Hospitals Abroad (ASHA) program.

The school, Der Kiureghian said, currently has 1,200 students, half of whom are undergraduates. “In two years, we will have close to 2,000 students. We are exhausting our physical capacity,” he said.

Der Kiureghian, originally from Iran, is on loan from the University of California, Berkley, where he is the Taisei Professor of Civil Engineering. One of the founders of AUA at the moment that Armenia gained independence, he has been at UC Berkley for 37 years.

He noted that while AUA’s standing does not compare globally to UC Berkley, it is on the cusp “of a positive slope that I can feel and see,” thus more satisfying in some ways as UC Berkley is already at the top of its game.

Currently the university offers three majors for undergraduates, English and communications, computation sciences and business/marketing. It also offers eight degree programs for graduate students.

It was only last year that the school started offering an undergraduate program.

He also praised the United World College (UWC) Dilijan College, an international high school with a global perspective and a collaborative approach, with other branches in Europe, Asia and South America. Armenia is the only country in the region. That school, he added, can be a good feeder school. Similarly he praised the Khoren and Shooshanig Avedisian School in the Malatya-Sebastia district of Yerevan. Edward Avedisian and his family, through the Armenian Missionary Association of America, revived the school and will pay their AUA tuition.

The Armenian government has passed a law that ensures that the citizens of Iraq, Syria and Ukraine who are in Armenia, should pay no more than the local Armenian citizens, which is the equivalent of $2,300 to $3,000 annually.

Also included in that number are diasporan Armenians who have 10-year visas.

“We have need-blind admission. Half get waivers anywhere from 20 to 90 percent,” he added.

For international students, the annual tuition for undergraduate and graduate programs ranges from $5,000 to $9,000, figures welcome to many in the US suffering from college sticker shock.

“We have a strong merit-based system. Our whole teaching system is different. The student-teacher interaction [is different]. We encourage thinking critically and participation in debates,” Der Kiureghian noted.

In addition to increasing the number of buildings, the extra funding would set up an innovation and technology incubation center, where students and faculty can come together, Der Kiureghian said.

Alexander said, “I want to use my 25 years of fundraising experience to build an institution I believe can help grow the country and sustain the future. I am very proud to give back.

The school is raising its profile locally; they had 83 events in March, an all-time high.

For more information on AUA, visit aua.am