Armenian Educators Visit LSI as part of a U.S. State Department Funded STEM and Social Entrepreneurship Project

Tallahassee, Fla. – In September of 2024, Florida State's Learning Systems Institute (LSI) and the Jim Moran College of Entrepreneurship were awarded a U.S. Department of State grant to enhance entrepreneurship education in Armenia in partnership with the Armenian State University of Economics (ASUE). Nearly one year later, officials from ASUE were in Tallahassee to continue work on the joint venture.

Lusine Danielyan, Director of Internationalization, Development and Partnerships, and Grisha Amirkhanayn, Head of Continuing Education, spent time at FSU with Provost Jim Clark, the team at the Jim Moran College of Entrepreneurship and leadership at LSI. The pair visited the FSU Innovation Hub, the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, FCR-STEM headquarters and Westcott.

Faculty from FSU have previously traveled to Armenia to begin training on entrepreneurship education. While visiting ASUE, FSU staff were on-site for the launch of a STEM Social Innovators Incubator at ASUE and there has already been major progress on the Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) project. LSI’s Dr. Vilma Fuentes is leading the effort to incorporate the COIL arm of the project.

“We have already started,” said Danielyan when discussing the COIL initiative. “The lecturers have already started talking to each other and the groups are being formed. So, this is exactly the beginning of the project of the COIL part, in terms of developing the structure of the assignment and deciding how exactly they're going to work together.”

“Our COIL project will promote entrepreneurial thinking through design thinking and virtual collaboration between American and Armenian students,” said Fuentes. “I am thankful to Dr. Juliana Binhote, Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship at FSU, and Hermine Poghoslyan, Professor of Marketing at ASUE, for their willingness to innovate and try something new.”

Among the other goals of the project are to elevate the entrepreneurship knowledge and skills of ASUE faculty and administrators, train ASUE students in the basic principles of entrepreneurship through the creation and implementation of four domain new courses which will form part of the FSU/ASUE Certificate in Social Entrepreneurship and establish a new institutional partnership between FSU and ASUE that promotes mutual understanding, collaboration, and respect between Armenians and Americans.

“It is so exciting to work with Armenian colleagues and introduce this high-impact teaching methodology into a new part of the FSU curriculum,” said Fuentes. “The Jim Moran College on Entrepreneurship is the ideal place to explore this innovative approach to instruction and internationalization.

“It has been a delight to work closely with Dr. Susana Santos, Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship, and Dr. Eric Ligouri, Associate Dean for Research and External Affairs at the Jim Moran College of Entrepreneurship. Now, I have a much better understanding of how entrepreneurship can serve as a powerful means to address societal challenges, including poverty, unemployment, rural underdevelopment, and internal displacement.”

This project is the first-ever collaboration between LSI and the Jim Moran College of Entrepreneurship. It is also the first project for LSI in Armenia. The nature of the cooperation between the FSU partners has made an impression on the colleagues from ASUE.

“One of the greatest things (is) how people here are open to collaboration, how they are keen to make our university developed and how they are willing to cooperate with us,” said Amirkhanayn when asked about the visit to FSU. 

“It is very important to have these international collaborations to learn, to see, to exchange, and to meet people and create these connections and I believe that that's where every big thing starts,” said Danielyan. “You know, just two people talking together and maybe finding a common ground and then doing small projects and then doing something bigger and then changing lives.”

LSI strives to lead the way in creating innovative educational solutions that seamlessly connect theory with practice. Through advanced research, we develop industry-leading methods and implementation strategies to enhance systematic learning at all levels and in all environments. For more than five decades, LSI has been committed to driving measurable improvements in the performance of both individuals and organizations.