LCC International University (Klaipeda, Lithuania) organized the English Public Speaking Competition on February 24 at the National University of Architecture and Construction of Armenia. 42 high school students nationwide participated in the contest.

The national stage of the competition in Armenia was supported by the Lithuanian Embassy in Armenia, US Embassy, American Councils, and the Ministry of Education and Science of Armenia.

LCC International University, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, has run the competition in 4 countries by now: Lithuania, Georgia, Ukraine, and Moldova. This year the university has added Armenia, Albania, Russia and Latvia.

The Armenian stage was supposed to have only one winner, but two pupils took the prize: Baghdasar Grigoryan (YSMU High School “Heratsi”, Yerevan, teacher Sona Tadevosyan) and Nikolay Nasonov (Secondary School No3, Ararat, teacher Anjela Malkhasyan).

The second and third places were for Donara Davtyan (School No94 after Gurgen Margaryan, Yerevan) and Khanum Gevorgyan (Karakert school No2, Karakert) respectively.

The two winners will travel to Lithuania for the final round of the International Public Speaking Competition on March 29, with their expenses covered by LCC. The final winner will be awarded a free semester of studies at LCC International University.

LCC President Dr. Marlene Wall told Mediamax that this is the first step of cooperation between Armenia and the University.

“I am still learning about Armenian education system as this is my first visit to Armenia. We are excited about what we are seeing here, students seem to be very eager and interested. I think as we move to a long term relationship with Armenia we would be very glad to be developing scholarships that are specific to top academic students in the country that fit our criteria. We look forward to having more Armenians on our campus,” Dr. Wall said.

She stressed that LCC provides about 65% of students with some level of financial aid or scholarship money. According to Marlene Wall, the university also intentionally keeps the tuition low.

Dr. Wall mentioned that LCC differs from other regional universities by a number of qualities.

“LCC International University is an American type University, which is unique in this region. We are a North American style university and so we have 60 % of our professors coming from the United States and Canada. We’re a learning community which means that we have professors and students learning together. It’s not as though there is some sort of hierarchy. We now have students from 30 countries. We have two students from Armenia and we would love to see more students. We are eager to help students to reach their potential and then to return to their countries as the new generation of leaders,” LCC University President said.

Narine Daneghyan