Armen Karo Student Assoctiation

Khachik Gevorgyan began by stressing the importance of a healthy academic environment in the Republic of Armenia. He explained how ARMACAD had been established and was operating in view of achieving higher academic standards in Armenia. He then introduced the Association’s mailing lists in various disciplines, more precisely ARMACAD, the Social Sciences and Humanities mailing list, emphasizing the fact that it has become one of the biggest academic mailing lists in the region. Then he spoke about the ArmenianStudies, ARTACAD (arts), ARMACADEX (exact sciences) and the newly established ARMACAD-IT (computer sciences) mailing lists.

The speaker then went on to talk about past ARMACAD events, more specifically, the international conferences entitled "Iran and the Caucasus: Unity and Diversity" and "The Turkic World, the Caucasus, and Iran: Civilisational Crossroads of Interactions", the summer school entitled "Religion vs. politics: the case of Armenian Christianity and Shi'ism", as well as the numerous informative and academic lectures given and attended by scholars from Armenia and abroad.

After his presentation Khachik Gevorgyan mentioned the academic partners of ARMACAD, particularly the -armenian-society-statement&catid=1:latest-news&Itemid=65">Oxford, MIT and Harvard Armenian Societies. He briefly presented their statements of collaboration and the informative lectures on applying to the said universities organized in cooperation with them. Khachik Gevorgyan concluded with ARMACAD’s appeal for similar collaboration between Armenian associations in Canadian universities, in particular, with MASA.  He spoke about the potential of MASA in influencing academic development in Armenia and among Armenian students. It was stressed that to create such cooperation it is very important that each Armenian student involved in any studies at international universities share all useful information on educational opportunities and scholarships from abroad by using the mailing lists of ARMACAD as well as deliver a lecture to students whenever he/she travels to the Republic of Armenia. In such cases ARMACAD organizes the lecture and disseminates relevant information through the Association’s mailing lists.

After Khachik Gevorgyan’s presentation, Gayaneh Melkom Melkomian spoke about her experience with ARMACAD. She stressed the importance of each Armenian student’s active participation in ARMACAD events, his/her willingness to give an informative lecture when travelling to Armenia, in view of raising academic awareness in Armenian students in the Republic of Armenia.

After the presentation, there was a “Question and Answer” session. Some of the participants, used the opportunity to express their appreciation of the mission carried out by ARMACAD. In particular, Dr. Oleh Kshanovski from the University of Kyiv, wished to express his gratitude to ARMACAD for the establishment of such a strong academic network and mentioned his experience of participating at academic events through ARMACAD.