We are 25
Donara Gabrielyan
Rector of the MMU, Ph.D. in Pedagogy, Associate Professor, Professor of the 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.
For human life it is youth, for university it is infancy.
“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: 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 in leading universities in Russia and Europe. Mesrop Mashtots University (UMM) is the first non—state university of the NKR (Nagorno-Karabakh Republic). It emerged as an adequate reflection of the existing socio-economic conditions in the country.
The birth of our university, like all non-state universities in the CIS, is a reaction to the market’s need for specialists in economic, legal, and humanitarian professions. Its emergence 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 orient itself and open specialties that are in demand in the labor market. MMU trains 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 familiarize ourselves 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 faithful to our principles.
Since 2016, after the April war, our university has started training specialists in the 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 conducts training courses in schools of Artsakh on improving and ensuring the quality of inclusive education for all. 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 market of specialists;
- an innovative approach to learning;
- approximation of the educational process to the needs of the trainees;
- the comfort of conditions for study, sports, leisure activities, extracurricular activities;
- scientific research.
We are glad to everyone who opens the doors of our university, who is ready to create a university of the XXI century together with us.