On December 27, the rector of National Polytechnic University of Armenia Gor Vardanyan and Executive Board Chairman of Unibank OJSC Mesrop Hakobyan signed the Memorandum of Cooperation.  The main aim of the memorandum is to establish a more efficient cooperation model between these two institutions for the improvement of educational programs and their application in business sectors.

NPUA rector G. Vardanyan pointed out that the Polytechnic University necessitates the active participation of the employers within the framework of this cooperation. “Nowadays, we will establish our cooperation on a completely new level and will aim at significant changes in the quality of respective educational programs, new infrastructures, especially provision of necessary laboratories for high quality education in the sphere of digital banking, organization of paid internships for students, as well as development of curricula together with bank specialists, provision of modern literature in the respective spheres, training of people from different specialties and recruitment of bank personnel by means of short-term courses,’- the rector pointed out. 

 Executive Board Chairman of Unibank OJSC Mesrop Hakobyan pointed out that the bank already had some cooperation projects with the university that had a rather successful course of action. According to him, the Polytechnic University is the HEI that will enable the bank to smoothly shift to digitalization by means of their cooperation with NPUA. ‘In the 21st century, the banks shift to digitalization and in this context our cooperation with the Polytechnic University will demonstrate its efficiency. Nowadays, there is a constant need not only to gain special knowledge, but also participate in professional training courses, both for initial employment and for the working employees and university graduates, that want to gain new competences. Therefore, we will cooperate both on theoretical basis and for the establishment of laboratories, so that specialists will become familiar with practical knowledge that will enable them to quickly adapt to bank activities,’ – M. Hakobyan pointed out.

 Unibank, in order to provide short-term and long-term high quality educational programs for ‘Digital banking’, will establish a laboratory equipped and enriched with modern digital toolkit and licensed programs at the Polytechnic University as well as will finance the implementation of preliminary design and concept development of design works of 3 university buildings. 

According to another item of the memorandum, the bank will contribute to the process of development and implementation of the educational program on the specialty of ‘Information Systems’. Paid internship for students will be organized in parallel.

We also anticipate Unibank to organize meetings of students with successful businesspeople who achieved success in different spheres of business who will introduce their personal experience to students. After testing processes and interviews, best students will get employment at Unibank or other partner organization of the bank.

We should also mention the fact that in 2019 the Polytechnic nursery school received its first big endowment. For the needs of NPUA nursery school, Unibank (on behalf of Executive Board Chairman Mesrop Hakobyan) donated gratuitously to the university around 90 cots, mattresses and more than 120 closets for children.