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July 5, 2007 Hi all, I have already spent one month in Yerevan, Armenia, a place I had never heard of until my friend Lisa sent me a job announcement (she sends all the unusual announcements to me, she informs me) for the position of Director of the Environmental Conservation and Research Center (ECRC) of the American University of Armenia. The notice suggested that a working knowledge of Russian or Armenian was a big plus although AUA is an affiliate of the University of California, Berkeley so professors teach classes in English. It turns out that the Provost of the entire UC system is also (by charter) the chair of the board of trustees of AUA.
I knew when I arrived at the airport (which is absolutely new and designed to have all arrivals walk through the duty-free shop where there were at least a dozen beautifully dressed Armenian young women clerks) that I was back in a culture where women are supposed to look good (really good) and mostly become the showpiece for the husband. Yerevan is a big city, over 1.3 million people, but it is fairly compact and confined to a valley—AUA is on a
hill. I walk down to the center of town which is only about 0.5 miles straight down the road. I live in a “yard” (courtyard arrangement of apartment, are deep underground but I can feel the faint rumble of trains that pass directly under the apartment building. The subway stop is just two doors away--incredibly convenient for getting to the supermarket (one stop) or downtown—2 stops (50 drams/one ride). At the moment there are about 340 drams to the dollar. Last year it was 500 drams to the dollar so there is a bit of an economic squeeze here, particularly at the university.
My apartment is lovely—really! It is one of the first apartments remodeled after independence in 1991. The living room and bedroom floors are of a beautiful parquet floor with a design in the wood, the kitchen and bathroom floors are marble, the counter is granite. The ceilings are very tall---ten feet?—and there is a fireplace, and arch between the living room and hall. Walls are white. The lighting is quite modern track lighting. I have air conditioning and a hot water system in the apartment so there is always hot water. The only slight flaw is
that the workmanship with marble and with bathroom fixtures is a little heavy-handed—I think they were new to this at the time. But there is a bidet!
AUA was founded in 1991—the idea was conceived right after the 1988 earthquake in the city of Giumri to the north. The polytechnic university there was completely destroyed and the original plan was to rebuild it. A number of university professors from the UC system came to help immediately after the earthquake—they were earthquake engineers from Berkeley (and they were Armenian). They planned the idea of the University. The government (Soviet at the time) agreed to the idea but wanted the university located in the largest city of Armenia which is Yerevan. The result is that the planning occurred just at the same time that Armenia became independent from the Soviet Union. Funding and support for the new university came from the Armenian General Benevolent Union (an organization of Armenians who live outside Armenia), the Armenian Church, and the government which donated the old Comsomol building (where Soviet youth were indoctrinated). 2007 is AUA’s 16th year as a graduate university that offers Master’s degrees in a variety of programs. Each program (e.g.
law, policy, business, industrial engineering and computer science) has a research center attached. The Environmental Center is unusual, though, because the Environmental Sciences program does not offer Master’s degrees. Rather, by stipulation of one of the major donors, Mr. Sarkis Acopian, (he lives in Pennsylvania), every student in AUA must take one environmental course. So we are a service program and a research center. We do plan to offer a Master’s degree in Environmental Science in the near future.
My job, as director of the ECRC is to build our current research to include a more comprehensive environmental science research program by obtaining funding to equip a new wet lab facility that will be in the new building (ready by July 2008), and to find funding to support environmental research in all areas of conservation and conservation education. Currently we have a large project that focuses on white storks and their nesting success in village habitats and within hotspots of DDT use. The approach that is being used for this project is to involve the villagers in data collection about the date of return of the storks from their wintering grounds in Africa, date of egg-laying, date of fledging,
and date of out migration. Also record of nests destroyed by fire., which happens to about 1 in 50 nests on the powerline poles.
The ECRC has focused on studies that involve bird ecology because Mr. Acopian is an avid birder. One of the first initiatives of the center, financed by Mr. Acopian, was to develop a scholarly Manual of Birds of Armenia, a field handbook with colored plates and maps, and a large reference map of bird sitings. This project was completed in 2001 and the center has worked on bird conservation projects ever since. Now is the time to include other environmental issues in our research program—and there are many as future photos will show.
So, enough background for the first blog—I have to write many to catch up. Next I’ll talk about Yerevan and daily living here.
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Tom Lyman
non-member comment
Your Blog Looks Great!
Very impressive first "Blog."