1993_03 Hye Sharzhoom Newspaper March 1993

              Hye Sharzhoom - March 1993
Page 5
Former CSUF Professor Dr. Volpp Returns With Impressions of First Visit to Armenia
    Head of Haigazian University College Business School to Return to Armenia in March
By Armen Aghishian
Staff Writer
Dr. Loius Volpp was the guest speaker at the 7th
annual banquet of the Armenian Studies Program held on January 31,1993. Dr. Volpp was
recently appointed as the President of the
Haigazian University College Graduate School
of Business in Yerevan, Armenia.
Q: Briefly, Dr. Volpp, what is your chief mission
in this undertaking?
A: My goal, as president ofthe graduate school
of » usiness (MBA program), is to develop the
school and have a stable condition of continuity
before I leave it
Q: What specific conditions are the students
living under presently with regards to food?
A: The conditions under which the students live
and work have been described over and over by
the writers and columnists ofthe various newspapers as a situation that the ordinary person could
not fathom unless they lived there.
First, in terms of their physical well-being,
there is a concern about the great shortage of
food. The food that is available is plentiful in
some places, however, where the food is plentiful, the food is very expensive compared to the
money they have. You can find fresh eggs,
vegetables, and fruit but they're very expensive.
It is difficult to find bread, there'are very very
long bread lines - the situation however, did
improve immensely when they went to rationing.
The breadlines dropped in terms of waiting from
all night to about half an hour. The price of bread
increased in that period from 6 rubles per 2 kilo
loaf to 36 rubles. That sounds like an extraordinarily modest amount of money because it ends
up amounting to about 6-7 cents but if you don't
have 6-7 cents, it poses a hardship. Therefore,
food has presented a serious problem.
Q: We have heard many reports of energy
shortages. Could you give us your impressions of
this concern?
A. There is very Utile heat in the homes. Only in
November was there some natural gas, unfortunately it failed after a few days. You could, as a
few people did, use electric heaters, but many
people went without any heat for as many as
twelve days straight. When there is electricity, it
is only available for a fews hours per day - you
just can't heat your home with an electric burner
in a couple of hours. I have special empathy for
the young children and babies who must be taken
care of without any warmth.
Q: What about the gas supply?
A. The gas situation, referred to as the benzene
problem is extreme also. You just can't get gasoline when it is available; you must get it from a
truck on the street comer, not at a gas station. It
is very low grade, low octane, and dirty fuel
which is damaging to automobiles. It is also very
expensive-the price fluctuates violently.
At one point gasoline had reached a price of
5,000 rubles per liter which converted to dollars,
at that time, would equate to roughly $35 per
liter. Obviously, people ceased to drive a car-
busy streets became virtually vacant. This made
public transportation very important, but the gov -
emment can't get petroleum to run the diesel or
gasoline busses. The shortage of fuel at the
generator plants results in a great shortage of
electricity and therefore the street cars don't run
and people have to walk. One particular student
of mine, when asked after coming in late several
mornings in a row why he was late go often
replied that he had to walk 10km in the hilly
terrain which was covered with snow at the time.
Q: How was the energy supply at shool?
A: The energy at school also had adverse effects.
The lack of energy, and therefore heat was obvious to me, when I looked at the class one morning
and saw them bundled up - I could see their
breath. We had no lights - we relied on sunlight.
I planned lectures according to the availability of
sunlight.
Q: What effect did this have on student morale?
A: Despite the adverse conditions almost all
students came to classes and did not complain
about the conditions. Another area of morale
which I have concerns about is the degree of
optimism students have regarding the future.
They weren't sure that what we taught would do
them any good in Armenia But they were so
desperate, with no other source of hope, that they
were willing to try. There are many things in
their environment which causes this skepticism.
The old network of KGB people and the communist "apparachiks" are still there. Much of that
has turned to become the organized crime in the
Commonwealth of Independent States, including Armenia. The government itself gets the
students discouraged aboutthe prospect that those
leaders were iust more of the same communists
and KGB as before, only with a new set of labels.
The morale problem to be solved is to get the
students optimistic about making some good
things happen. But I'm amazed at the students
because while they allow these things to get in
their minds from time to time, they fight it and get
through it while mastering the course work and
studying.
Q: Did you have any difficulty teaching Armerkan
(business) concepts to the students in the classroom?
A: The students that I have in class are very
bright-extraordinarily well-educated in the sense
of knowing things, anything complicated. They
would be able to learn in a hurry.
Q: Was language a problem?
A: The language in the school is English. The
students that are in the M.B.A. program now
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Left to Right: Dr. Dickran Kouymjian, Dr. Louis Volpp, Mrs. Holly Volpp,
CSUF President Dr. John Welty, Barlow Der Mugrdechian
started last March (1992) and they had a program
from early March through August in English. I'm
utterly amazed that they did so well. They had to
have scores of a minimum of 500 in TOEFL and
most of them had 550 or more-comparable to the
normal performance in the U.S .A. The only real
deficiency was a lack of confidence on the part of
some. They could say something and they could
ask questions very well but they couldn't engage
in argument very well due to a lack of confidence.
Q: How are books made available?
A: Students are provided their books ultimately
at no cost to them. We receive a lot of our books
through donations. For a student to have to buy
his/her own book would present a hardship considering a full professor makes 3,000 rubles a
month-roughly $7 and a student will make considerably less than that, let alone come up with
$50 for a textbook. A lot of students lost their
jobs during the blockade and recession.
Q:What became ofthe unemployed students?
A: I announced to the class that I was going to hire
anybody who wanted a job and I'd pay them
5,000 rubles per month. All they had to do was
apply. 80% applied and I hired them. 5000
rubles is over 1.5 times what a full professor
makes. One project I had was to develop the
consumer Price Index (CPI) of Armenia as well
as developing condominium associations in apartment houses that have been privatized. This
project is being developed to see what can be
done to instill a "caretaker spirit" within the
group of occupants to clean up and fix their
apartments. Yet another project involves the
analysis of privatization of various industries.
This assists current industries and new ones.
Q: What employment opportunities are available upon graduation from a program?
A: The picture is rather gloomy and very bright
On the one hand, they are going to be needed to
an extreme degree. Companies have no decent
cost accounting.
The question is going to be, will the old communist "apparatchiks" who are now running the
companies be defensive and unwilling to bring
these people in or are they going to be open to
them. Therefore, this is why I am so optimistic
about our studies on privatization.
Q: Are students in touch with international news
and politics?
A: Yes, we receive CNN and incorporate it into
our teaching. We receive other radio programs
and journals.
Q: Where do you see entrepreneurial employment opportunities?
A: I think that if a few students, perhaps five or so
banded together, they could create a successful
and profitable consulting firm for business due to
the fact that the old way of thinking is slowly
starting to change.
Q:What is the state ofthe economy?
A: For one, people don't put money in the bank,
because the banking system, which is already in
a disarray, may not let them take out their money
because they might not have it So people are
walking around with all of their money in their
pockets. Money has no effective function as a
store of value. The exchange rate was 220 rubles
per dollar when I arrived. In December it was 500
per dollar, the prior December it was 100 per
dollar.
Q: What advice do you have for Armenia?
A: Armenia should do all it can to secure a
political position enabling them to be at peace
with their neighbors. I'm not saying loving or
trusting their neighbors but coexisting and doing
business with their neighbors, cautiously. Without an oudet to a sea, the blockades will continue
and Armenians will suffer-they need to secure an
outlet to the Mediterranean peacefully. The
blockade has cut off fuel supplies-thus cars are
useless but Armenians have got along remarkable well.
Q: What is the key concern of the typical students?
A: Survival! When they're rational and they
think about it they're survival is threatened all of
the time. But they push those thoughts aside so
they can get along with their lives. My hardest
job as a teacher is to pay enough attention to
reality and at the same time-offer hope! I pose a
question to students by saying-if all is hopeless
then you have nothing to lose, if you fell all is
hopeless but there is some small reason for hope,
you've lost your one opportunity when you give
in to hopelessness. Therefore you must find
those opportunities, and have hope whenever and
whereever its sensible because you've lost nothing. Even if you're wrong-you're lost nothing.
The downside if there is nothing-is nothing. I
find that I need to give a five minute motivational
sermon to keep them up in spirit
Q: Did you understand the conditions you would
be living under before you departed for Armenia?
A: I had heard what if would be like but viscer-
ally, I was not prepared for what I was actually
faced with. They said it would be like camping-
no heat no electricity-and indeed it was so. I am
the adventurous type anyway, and after seeing
other people in more adverse conditions, I saw
reality. I had given myself the same ruble budget
what other professors would have, but I could
cheat a little-for a snickers bar for me and my
wife-by using American dollars.