institution modeled on Western-style higher education, committed to teaching, research, and service; it offers 11 master's and 8 bachelor's degrees.
== History ==
=== Origins ===
The idea of opening an American-style institution of higher education in Armenia originated in the late 1980s. When Armenia was struck by a devastating earthquake in 1988 the country, then still part of the Soviet Union, was opened to unprecedented international humanitarian and technical assistance. A number of earthquake engineers from the West helped in the reconstruction of the disaster zone. In 1989, Yuri Sarkissian, then rector of the Yerevan Polytechnic Institute, suggested to Armen Der Kiureghian, Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, that an Armenian technical university based on the Western model ought to be established to foster educational progress in Armenia. The proposition was narrowed to the creation a graduate university on the American model. Der Kiureghian and another earthquake …
