PROJECT SUMMARY
The T-GREEN project aims to address the need for reform in graduate education within Armenia. This reform is intended to align with the Green Deal and facilitate the transition from conventional to forward-looking, environmentally conscious, and interdisciplinary curricula. The project also seeks to foster student mobility and create collaborative approaches to implementing degree programs.
At the core of this project lies the capacity building of national and institutional administrators, decision-makers, policy implementers, educators, researchers, and students. The primary focus is on integrating Sustainable Development Goals related to environmental concerns into policies and educational content.
An additional pivotal goal of the project involves establishing a network that encompasses national authorities, Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), and other stakeholders. This network will promote both horizontal and vertical collaboration. To achieve this, national and institutional regulations that encourage joint, dual, or multiple degree programs and support student mobility, credit transfer, and recognition will be refined and tested.
A strategic reassessment of the national list of professions will enable the licensing of new, future-oriented, interdisciplinary, and green master’s degree programs. The collaborative structures that are developed will have a lasting impact, extending beyond the project’s timeframe and leading to further initiatives.
The project’s accomplishments will include a comprehensive national and institutional toolkit that facilitates collaborative efforts. This toolkit will undergo testing through the introduction of three newly developed collaborative green educational programs, as well as the reprofiling of eight existing programs to incorporate green modules.
GENERAL OBJECTIVES
Despite the European Union’s targeted efforts to support Armenia in various sectors of environmental sustainability (e.g., EaP Green project, Green action task force, EU-Green agriculture initiative, Green Yerevan–energy efficiency and green buses, etc.), the increase in international funding and green investments (e.g., EBRD and Green Climate Fund, GEFF programme, etc.), and the strategic initiatives of the Government of the Republic of Armenia (RA), most higher education institutions (HEIs) in Armenia have remained indifferent to these endeavours. These institutions lack focused courses, content, and educational programs related to sustainability, as well as efforts to nurture students’ green skills (both job-specific and soft skills) and environmentally conscious mindsets.
The T-GREEN project addresses the priority of “Environment and fight against climate change” by reforming graduate education in Armenia to support the Green Deal, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), EU initiatives, and national policies. The European Commission’s (EC) project priority area centres on the European Green Deal. The project aims to modernize postgraduate degrees with interdisciplinary and collaborative programs that contribute to mitigating climate change and nurturing a skilled workforce for sustainable industries. While the primary focus is on aligning with the EU Green Deal, the project also ensures inclusivity through activities and management practices such as accessible electronic materials, an accessible website, and involving NGOs working with special needs in the development of the Master’s program in Sustainable Cities.
Regional Priority
The integration of sustainable content into education complements the regional priority of structural reforms aimed at promoting and supporting mobility initiatives. These reforms include creating a recognition and credit transfer system akin to the Erasmus+ KA1 system in Armenia. The project also involves piloting interdisciplinary collaborative educational programs.
Purpose and Objectives
The overarching objective of the project is to reform graduate education in Armenia to align with the Green Deal and transition from conventional to forward-looking, green, and interdisciplinary curricula. Additionally, the project seeks to promote student mobility and establish collaborative degree implementation strategies. Both EU Member State partners and Armenian collaborators should leverage their strengths, experiences, and lessons learned to bridge Armenia’s developmental gap in organizing advanced and modernized green curricula. This effort involves proactively addressing labour market needs, implementing collaborative degree programs, and ensuring student mobility.
Addressing environmental challenges requires specific solutions at the national level, as environmental concerns transcend borders. The shift from traditional linear supply chains to closed-loop or circular models, along with the transition from conventional economic systems to circular economies and sustainable production, necessitates green skills. This shift emphasized in the EU Green Deal (2019), is crucial for future leadership and overall economic sustainability. Achieving these transformations requires a significant conceptual shift in higher education programs. HEIs play a fundamental role in enabling the aforementioned transformations through robust capacity building, retraining, and upskilling initiatives for national and institutional decision-makers, faculty, and researchers. This includes designing outcome-oriented, interdisciplinary, innovative, and collaborative educational programs.
The relevance of these issues is particularly pronounced in the Armenian context, as the country grapples with environmental challenges including, but not limited to, the overexploitation of natural resources, environmental pollution, illegal logging, waterlogging of Lake Sevan, and poor water resource and waste management.
The project’s objective extends to transforming graduate education in the Republic of Armenia and introducing mobility schemes and collaborative degree programs. Despite the introduction of the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS) in Armenia in 2007, its effective implementation remains unresolved. Challenges persist at both the national and institutional levels, including limited mobility options for students within a single institution or between departments, a situation common in cases of inter-institutional mobility.