DONARA GABRIELYAN
MMU Rector, Ph.D.in Pedagogics, Associate Professor, Professor of MMU,
Honorary Doctor of the Slavic Academy of Nature and Society,
Honorary Professor of the International University of Vienna,
Member of the Rectors Club of Europe
“The idea of creating a non-state university was born in September 1996. In the same year, we received a license to realize our dream that is to create an innovative university, to revive the best educational traditions of pre-revolutionary Karabakh, when graduates of educational institutions of the region brilliantly continued their education at leading universities of Russia and Europe. Mesrop Mashtots University (MMU) is the first non-state university of the NKR (Nagorno-Karabakh Republic). It appeared as an adequate reflection of the existing socio-economic conditions in the country.
The birth of our university, like all non-state universities with in the CIS, is a reaction to the market’s need for specialists in economic, legal, and humanitarian professions. Its creation was generated by the policy that destroyed the monopoly of the state in the higher education system.
Today, only a university that produces high-quality “products” can be successful.
Greater autonomy and mobility allowed our university to quickly navigate and open specialties that are in demand in the labor market. MMU prepares specialists in the field of information technology, management, law and humanities. To improve the quality of education, we invite highly qualified specialists from the Republic of Armenia and the Russian Federation.
Joining the Club of Rectors of Europe and communication with foreign image organizations, visiting the best universities in the world allowed us to sufficiently get acquainted with the higher education system of France, England, Spain, Austria, the USA, Japan, and the United Arab Emirates. The need to integrate into the European education system, dictated by the principles of the Bologna Convention, allowed us to assess modern realities, to combine the best traditions of the Western education system and the Soviet higher school. The innovative approach to education does not deny the preservation of the fundamental and systematic nature of the Soviet school.
We have developed a strategy for the development of UMM. It is aimed at solving the primary task, which has become our motto: “To do everything that can benefit the country“.
We are true to our principles.
Since 2016, after the April war, our university has started training specialists in Caucasian studies with the study of the languages of the region: Azerbaijani and Persian.
After the forty-four-day war, social workers became in demand, and MMU was the first to open a master’s degree in this specialty. Today, a group of teachers is conducting training courses in schools of Artsakh on improving and ensuring the quality of common inclusive education.
Our main strategic line is to create a university that would have the following features;
- flexibility and dynamism of response to changes in demand in the labour markets;
- innovative approach to learning;
- approximation of the educational process to the needs of the trainees;
- comfortable conditions for study, sports, leisure activities, extracurricular activities;
- the comfort of conditions for study, sports, leisure activities, extracurricular activities;
- development of scientific research.
We welcome everyone who opens the doors of our university, who is ready to create a university of the XXI century together with us.