Countries such as Armenia, Austria and Lebanon were represented
by a diverse gathering of graduate students at UCLA to share ideas
in Armenian studies.
Addressing a variety of aspects of Armenian culture, graduate
students presented their research in numerous related fields in an
all-day conference Friday.
Students and Armenian studies experts filled Royce Hall’s
conference room for the second annual Graduate Student Colloquium
in Armenian Studies, hosted by the Armenian Graduate Student
Association.
A dozen graduate students presented on various subjects related
to Armenian studies, from history and political science to
education, linguistics and literature.
One of the colloquium’s primary objectives was to supply
graduate students with an opportunity to compare their own research
with that of other student research in similar fields and to
receive feedback from faculty.
One of Friday’s presenters, Yeprem Mihranian, a graduate
student at the University of Massachusetts, said he hoped feedback
to his presentation would clarify what additional work needs to be
done to fine-tune his dissertation proposal.
Mihranian was born in Iran and has taught in Armenia and in the
New York City public school system.
Studying students in one Armenian day-school in the United
States, Mihranian has researched how students deal with their
Armenian ethnic and traditional identities in America.
Mahranian said he hopes his studies will provide him with
insight on Armenian children that will subsequently aid him in
chartering a Los Angeles school with an Armenian studies
curriculum.
“I would like … to provide a holistic sense of how
culture, history and language have evolved, so that different
communities can live together with a more in-depth knowledge of
each other,” he said.
This year’s event was successful because of increased
community awareness, the success of last year’s event and
word of mouth, said Ramela Abbamontian, a UCLA graduate student in
Armenian studies.
“The topics are also more diverse this year, probably
because there are more international students,” Abbamontian
said.
Ani Moughamian, a UCLA graduate student in education, shared her
study of the academic and literacy outcomes of students attending
Armenian schools in the United States to learn English. Moughamian
focused her study on students in the fourth through sixth
grades.
Children whose first language is Armenian form the second
largest minority in the Los Angeles Unified School District and the
first largest in the Glendale School District.
But current and past research has only been conducted on adults
and some adolescents. Even that research was not a study of
Armenians specifically, but a comparison with other ethnic groups,
Moughamian said.
Moughamian intends to examine the influence of Armenian culture
on the academic proficiency of 49 fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders
to understand how to help students entering into the U.S. public
education system after sixth grade.
Several participants said Friday’s Armenian colloquium was
a success and said they hope annual colloquiums will continue.
“It is a testament to the organizational strength of the
graduate student organizing committee of the Armenian Graduate
Student Association that such a mosaic is hosted at UCLA,”
said Graduate Student Association President Hanish Rathod.
“This colloquium introduces new ideas and plants seeds of
new questions ““ and potentially collaborations ““ so
that we can all meet again in future years to see the fruits of the
academic discourse of today,” Rathod said.