Its been slightly more then a month since I began at the Gevorkian Theological Seminary at the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin. Since then, the process of settling in to my academic life has been, like most things in Armenia, less then predictable.

In this post and over the next couple in this series, I’d like to share with you how the Seminary is structured, what the student life is like, and finally my personal experience. This is for the benefit of my friends and loved ones, as well as anyone else that is curious how an Armenian Seminary works.

Note: before considering some of the more entertaining things about the Seminary, I want to make a blanket statement. These things may only be funny from a western-centric point of view, and are perfectly normal and productive here. What’s more, despite and sometimes due to these things, I very much like being a seminarian here

How the Seminary Works

The Gevorkian Seminary, the preeminent institution for preparing young men for the priesthood in Armenia, is a six year program. A student who attends all six years will receive a bachelors degree in Theology, and specialized education in the Priesthood. In their fifth year, they’ll be ordained as a Deacon, the lowest rank of clergy (if they pass the relevant tests). After their sixth year, if they pass their exams, and if they accept the responsibility, they will at some point be ordained a celebrate or married priest (assuming that they’ve been deemed as ready). For some of them it will still be a number of years before they are ordained. Sometimes this has to do with the marriage thing, but we’ll get into that later. If the clergyman is ordained as a celibate priest it will be highly encouraged, if not mandatory, that they continue their education at the Masters level at some international university, in Europe, America, or Russia.

Students enter the Seminary after completing the Armenian equivalent of High School. High School (up until this year I think, as the laws were recently changed) goes until the age of 16. This means that most students are about 17 years old when they begin their seminary education. So, its possible for someone to graduate from the seminary, and be ordained by the young age of 23. It doesn’t happen very often, but it happens.

Most of the teachers of the religious courses are clergymen. Priests who work and sometimes live in the Monastery adjacent to the Seminary. As far as I’ve experienced, they are all very capable educators, and are highly versed in the subjects they are teaching. The school’s secular courses (Literature, History, Philosophy, Foreign Languages, etc…) are pretty much all taught by lay people. I’m not in most of those classes, so I can’t speak about them very much. I can confidently say that my Armenian History teacher is no Jaime Escalante though.

The Hierarchy of the school consists of a Dean, and two Vice-Deans, one in charge of the schools academic program, and the other responsible for administrative issues. Of course, being that its located at the Mother See, the school falls under the supervision of the Catholicos, His Holiness Karekin II, who takes great interest in the affairs of the seminary.

Well, that’s about it as far as the structure goes. Its not really entertaining at all actually, but I thought it would be interesting for everyone to have an idea of how the Seminary functions. In my next post I’ll present the Academic life of the school.