College of Health Sciences Associate Dean Varduhi Petrosyan was recently appointed Associate Editor of the International Journal for Equity in Health, “an open access, peer-reviewed, online journal presenting evidence relevant to the search for, and attainment of, equity in health across and within countries.”

Dr. Syuzanna Vasilyan, Assistant Professor, Political Science and International Affairs, recently participated in the round-table conference “Democracy promotion East and South after the Arab Spring: Re-evaluating the EU’s Engagement with Authoritarian Regimes,” organized jointly by Maastricht University (the Netherlands), the Trans-European Policy Studies Association (Belgium) and the Institut für Europäische Politik (Germany). Dr. Vasilyan presented a talk on “The European Union (EU) as a ‘Moral Power’ through its Democracy Promotion Policy in the South Caucasus.”

AUA will once again host Northeastern University’s Dialogue of Civilizations Study in Armenia program which offers students an opportunity to study Armenia’s history, politics, and culture while earning college credit. This year the program will be held from late May to late June 2012 and will include field trips to Armenia’s various historical sites. The application deadline is February 15, 2012. For more information please see: http://www.northeastern.edu/internationalaffairs/learning_coop/dialogue/

AUA Law Adjunct Lecturer Yeghishe Kirakosyan has been named Deputy Minister of Justice. Mr. Kirakosyan is teaching Public International Law this winter in the Law Department. Over the past year, he has organized and led a number of round tables at AUA on emerging issues in international law in conjunction with International and Comparative Law Center of which he is a co-founder. Mr. Kirakosyan holds his doctorate in public international law from Yerevan State University and has completed the Foreign Ministry Training Program at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. We congratulate Mr. Kirakosyan on his appointment and wish him all the best as he undertakes this important public service.

The School of Business and Management (SBM) is pleased to announce that based on the recommendation of the SBM Faculty Search Committee, Ms. Mane Beglaryan has been appointed as Lecturer of Management and Coordinator of the MBA Internship Program. According to Mr. Eric Guevorkian, Interim Dean of SBM, this appointment is in line with SBM’s Strategic Plan 2011-17 which calls for building a core full-time resident faculty with the quality and depth of skills necessary to meet SBM’s future program expansion and diversification needs. SBM expects to recruit at least four full-time faculty members by the end of spring 2013.

Prior to joining SBM, Ms Beglaryan worked on USAID-funded projects in the area of policy and provision of technical assistance for selected government ministries and agencies before which she consulted for the EU Advisory Group as an expert to the Ministry of Finance and State Revenue Committee supporting the implementation of the EU-Armenia European Neighborhood Policy Action Plan in the area of tax and customs policy issues.

Ms. Beglaryan comes with a background in international development having worked for private consulting companies in Washington, D.C. Her main areas of interest are public and private sector management, institutional capacity development, and program evaluation. In parallel to her professional work, she taught Organizational Behavior at AUA’s School of Political Science and International Affairs in spring 2011, and designed and taught Effective Communications at SBM last fall. She is a graduate of Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University and Yerevan State University.

January, 2012

The Center for Excellence in Negotiation hosted a seminar led by Boston-based Bridgeway Group negotiation expert Arthur Martirosyan on the role of values and environment on negotiation processes. The discussion aimed to help the CEN set its agenda for the coming year. The CEN’s work has three prongs: (1) training, (2) analytics/research, (3) consultation/interventions. The CEN is a program of AUA’s Legal Resource Center. The CEN is funded in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and is part of a network, including CEN-Kiev and CEN-Moscow, whose activities are led by Mr. Martirosyan. Mr. Martirosyan has nearly two decades experience as a process technician, analyst and adviser, and has worked in many international hot spots, including the Balkans, Mid-East and No. Caucasus regions.  

January, 2012

The Engineering Research Center (ERC) has initiated a project entitled “Development of a Solar and Natural-Gas Driven Hybrid Hot Water and Space Heating System.” The project is funded by Industrial Technologies Co. (ITC), an Armenia-based engineering and product-development company. ERC will develop an optimized design for the unit and provide product schematics and specifications. ITC will make use of AUA engineers’ R&D to prepare the fabrication drawings. The prototype is expected to be built jointly after completion of the design phase. Dr. Artak Hambarian, the project’s principal investigator (PI), explains, “These units are expected to reduce the dependency on natural-gas and tap into solar energy, a resource that is abundant in Armenia.” Three CoE students were competitively recruited to participate in this project.

From left to right: Seda Baghdasaryan, Hasmik Vasilyan, Razmik Martirosyan, and Dr. Artak Hambarian (PI). The students are all in their second year of the IESM Master’s program.

Dr. Tatul Hakobyan, Public Health Adviser in the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for Europe, led the Public Health seminar at the College of Health Sciences on December 20, 2011. Dr. Hakobyan’s talk was devoted to “Challenges and Opportunities for Better Health in Europe.”
In April 2011, Tatul Hakobyan was appointed to the position of Public Health Adviser in the WHO Regional Office for Europe. He is responsible for evaluation of public health services and development of public health workforce in the region. Currently, Dr. Hakobyan and a team of public health technical officers are working on the European Action Plan for strengthening public health capacities and services.

During the seminar Dr. Hakobyan presented current developments in the WHO European Region to address the public health challenges and new opportunities for strengthening public health services. He further discussed the impact of these new directions for Armenia. The presentation was followed by an extended discussion with the capacity audience. The seminar was attended by students, alumni and faculty from the College of Health Sciences at the American University of Armenia, as well as other health professionals and representatives from various international organizations.
The Public Health Seminar on December 20 was organized in memory of our dearly departed colleague and friend Elizabeth Danielyan, 2001 MPH Alumna, who led the WHO Country Office in Armenia.

Byron Crape, CHS, introducing the speaker	Tatul Hakobyan, WHO Regional Office for Europe
Audience	Naira Gharakhanyan, WorldVision Armenia

AUA Alumnus Emil Babayan, who is also a Senior Lecturer in the Law Department, was recently appointed to head the Commission on Ethics of High Ranking Officials. The Commission, established by Presidential decree, aims to “raise society’s confidence in public institutions functioning in Armenia” and create a more transparent public domain. Previous to this appointment Babayan served as Deputy Minister of Justice of the Republic of Armenia. Babayan served as AUA’s 2011 Commencement Speaker.

Chief Financial Officer Gevorg Goyunyan was recently invited by CivilNet.TV to talk about AUA’s affordable alternative to the high cost of student loans in Armenia. AUA has led the charge to make high quality education affordable by offering a low cost Student Loan Program, the first of its kind in Armenia, which has been embraced by hundreds of students over the years.