NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF ARCHITECTURE AND CONSTRUCTION OF ARMENIA

The Innovation and Entrepreneurship Support Center at the NUACA is already ready almost one and a half year after the launch of the project on “ENHANCING INNOVATION COMPETENCIES AND ENTREPRENEURIAL SKILLS IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION (InnoCENS)” funded in the framework of the European Union’s Erasmus+ programme.

To draw an overview for the works done and to clarify the next steps Lana Karlova, the coordinator of the Erasmus + National Office in Armenia, was at our University today. It should be noted that the objective of the project is to contribute to the development of innovative and entrepreneurship skills of students. Special emphasis is placed on the development of innovation and entrepreneurship training for the engineering students, introduction of innovation pedagogy and capability assessment in teaching and learning processes, creation of innovative centers at partner universities, and the commercialization of the students and employees’ innovative ideas.

During the meeting, the urge for such a Center was raised again in the terms of the development and promotion of students, as well as for the economic growth of the country. As it was mentioned above, the intra-university environment  is already a favorable mileu for the birth of innovative ideas and their implementation. It is not a secret that today more and more young people in Armenia seek to create a startup inspired by many stories about how to start a business and earn millions. Of course, everything is not that much easy, in fact before success enormous work, attempts, failures can occur. However, the creation of such a Center at the NUACA will somehow contribute to the realization of such dreams of young adults. The Center will continue its activities in this direction, organizing various events, meetings with the  businessmen, start-up competitions, various training courses dedicated to entrepreneurship, copyright, etc.

These and other issues were discussed during the monitoring, with the participation of the representatives of all Armenian partner organizations in the InnoCENS program. National Program Coordinator Varazdat Hovhannisyan presented  the activities carried out during the one and a half year of the program and the recorded achievements in detail. The representatives of partner organizations and, in particular, the employees of the RA Ministry of Education and Science welcomed the concept of ​​the project as well as the process of its implementation.  The representatives of the Erasmus+ national office highlighted the importance of the project’s success dissemination  among other HEIs and affiliated organizations.

At the end of the meeting the representatives of the Erasmus+ national office noted that after summarizing the monitoring results, they will draw appropriate recommendations and consultations with the project partners, which will help to eliminate identified gaps and flaws for the sake of more effective implementation of the project.

It is worth to note that the InnoCENS Consortium includes 19 partners from Sweden, Spain, Finland, Armenia, Georgia, Belarus and Kazakhstan. The project is coordinated by the Royal Swedish Institute of Technology(KTH). The NUACA is the Coordinating Organization in Armenia. The duration of the project is 3 years. It was launched in December 2016 with its innauguration meeting held at the NUACA and will last until  December 2019.