On January 21, 2020, the American University of Armenia (AUA) hosted a dissemination conference on the internationalization of higher education in the framework of the Erasmus+ BOOST project – Boosting Armenian Universities: Internationalisation Strategy and Marketing.
Erasmus+ BOOST project coordinator Marianna Harutyunyan presented the achieved outcomes of the project: the benchmarking analysis conducted on internationalization practices; the development of a comprehensive national strategy for internationalization and action plan; the development of the national model for study-abroad programs; the establishment of international cooperation offices and service-oriented centers at Armenian HEIs, among others.
Tatevik Gharibyan, specialist on higher education policy development from the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sport of the Republic of Armenia (RA) and Gayane Harutyunyan, director of the National Information Center for Academic Recognition and Mobility, presented the internationalization strategy for Armenian HEIs.
The conference participants had the opportunity to discuss the important role of the presented strategies and make their input. Also, members of the project partner institutions shared their lessons on best practices learned during recent training sessions and international weeks organized by European partners of the consortium. The representatives from Instituto Superior Tecnico (Portugal), KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden), Tallinn University of Technology (Estonia), and University Rovira I Virgili (Spain) presented the experience of internationalization at their home institutions, development of the process as well as the challenges and achievements.
During the dissemination conference, representatives of Erasmus+ capacity building projects in Armenia, HARMONY, MINERVA, and SMART led an inter-project discussion. Anna Chulyan, the Head of Brusov YSULS Library and MINERVA Project coordinator at the YSULS, presented the main objectives and the expected outcomes of «ERASMUS + CBHE MINERVA – Strengthening Research Management and Open Science Capacities of HEIs in Moldova and Armenia» project.
The conference was followed by the consortium management team meeting the next day. The agenda included the remaining tasks to be completed in five months until the end of the project. The consortium management team decided to hold the final BOOST conference on July 1, 2020.
