SAN FRANCISCO, California — For Mark Sarkisian and his family, the idea behind the Sarkisian Foundation for the Arts and Engineering started with his daughters’ journeys through college and graduate school. The scholarship support they received inspired Mark to help other students pursue their studies. “That help really made a difference in our motivation to afford advanced education for them,” Sarkisian said.
Mark leads the Foundation together with his daughters Ellen, an instructional specialist with a non-profit organization committed to high school student retention in communities with challenging dropout rates, and Victoria, a graphic designer, who also built the Foundation’s website. Sarkisian’s own education intertwined engineering with studio art, architecture, art history, and graphic design. “The arts allowed me to see beyond pure engineering and influence my work throughout my career,” he said. His wife Cathy is an educator, and their third daughter Alexandra is an artist focused on video work.
As a structural engineer and a partner at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Sarkisian has dedicated his career to inventing high performance, environmentally sustainable structural systems. That background, merged with his daughters’, shaped a foundation committed to supporting students at the intersection of the technical and the creative: writers and engineers, architects and musicians.
Sarkisian first met AUA Co-Founder and President Emeritus Dr. Armen Der Kiureghian when invited by him to give a guest lecture at UC Berkeley. After purchasing and reading Dr. Der Kiureghian’s book, From Earthquake Tragedy to Beacon of Light: The Story of the American University of Armenia, he gained a deeper appreciation for the remarkable story behind AUA’s founding and the many challenges that had to be overcome to establish the University. Later, when he was approached about creating a scholarship for AUA students, that connection resurfaced, inspiring the Sarkisian Foundation to establish the Sarkisian Foundation for the Arts and Engineering Endowment Fund at AUA.
The family’s decision to establish an endowment at AUA also reflects a deeply personal connection to Armenia. Sarkisian’s grandparents were survivors of the Armenian Genocide, ultimately rebuilding their lives in the United States after being forced from their homeland. First in Sarkisian’s immediate family to return to Armenia since the Genocide, he and his family visited Yerevan and surrounding communities during the 2022 winter holidays. Later, after extensive family research by eldest daughter Alexandra, he and Alexandra journeyed to Western Armenia, locating what they believe to be the town their grandparents once called home.
Sarkisian hopes that support for AUA will encourage students’ respect for history with a commitment to shape the future. “I believe that for most of us successful careers / lifestyles need to be earned,” he said. “Somebody gives you an opportunity to get educated, you take it, run with it, and make the very best of it. And if you can do that, I can almost guarantee you’ll be successful in many ways.”
Underneath that encouragement is a quieter argument about Armenia itself: Sarkisian believes that strengthening education inside the country will keep talented people there, not because they are obligated to stay but because they will simply have less reasons to leave by applying skills into careers in their home country. “As we elevate the talent, the talented do tend to stay in locations where they are educated,” he said. “When students receive their higher education inside Armenia, it naturally happens that many students will stay in the country, which is a good thing.”
To other donors weighing whether education is where their money belongs, Sarkisian offers something closer to a structural argument than a sentimental one. “I think higher education is the foundation of a good life” he said, and then, almost as an aside, he noted that his own firm tends to hire only candidates with master’s degrees or doctorates. The Foundation, he is careful to say, cannot fix everything at once and does not pretend to. “You can’t solve all the problems at once. So, it’s one by one. It’s a student at a time,” he remarked.
It is, in the end, a family project in the fullest sense. “There’s the actual outward side of it through scholarships,” Sarkisian said, “but then there’s the inward side of teaching (his daughters) with the hope they will carry on with giving in their lives. The giving is inspired by our Armenian heritage, and we are very grateful for that.”
Founded in 1991, the American University of Armenia (AUA) is a private, independent university located in Yerevan, Armenia, affiliated with the University of California, and accredited by the WASC Senior College and University Commission (WSCUC) in the United States. AUA provides local and international students with Western-style education through top-quality undergraduate and graduate degree and certificate programs, promotes research and innovation, encourages civic engagement and community service, and fosters democratic values. AUA’s Office of Advancement stewards the University’s philanthropic efforts exclusively for educational purposes.