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UCLA graduate student in education Ani Moughamian speaks at the colloquium.

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.