Dear lecturers, graduates, and future students of Nomadic University!

Yesterday, on May 22, 2025, we held our Open Day, which launched enrollment for our next semester — already our fifth — the Summer Semester 2025.

As in previous semesters, it will last five weeks, with classes running from June 2 to July 9. This will be followed by a week for preparing and defending course projects. The defenses will take place on July 13 and 14, and the semester will conclude with the Graduation Ceremony.

The past Spring Semester turned out to be our most intensive one so far. Initially, twelve courses were announced, and an unprecedented number of them — ten courses — were selected by students and reached the required minimum enrollment.

Classes were held at five different venues in Batumi:

• tmp_space, the art space where we began our regular classes;
• WaterLand Spa Center, where one of our lecturers works;
• Dissident Café, one of our long-standing partners, co-founded by another of our lecturers;
• Spring School, a new partner and a family educational space where future Nomadic University students are currently completing their secondary education;
• Independent Living Center, the office of one of Adjara’s most effective civic organizations, the Alliance of Women with Disabilities, which has recently become our partner.

This allowed us to welcome more than fifty regularly attending students, including participants of our now popular open classes in the courses “Constitution for Everyone” and “Communities: From Neighbors to Global Civic Networks.” These classes brought together civic activists from Russia and Georgia for the first time.

Another important success was the strong enrollment in both announced English-language courses:

• Global Nomad’s Education and Careers;
• Actor-Publics and Voluntary Movements.

For the first time, twenty-two final projects were submitted for defense. This required very intensive work from the Defense Committees, approved shortly before the defenses. The committees held presentations of Final Course Projects across eight courses, from 9:30 in the morning until 23:30 at night.

Following the defenses, the Academic Council held a final meeting with a detailed analysis of the results. A number of important decisions were made to clarify the procedures and deadlines for:

• choosing the topic of the Final Course Project;
• mandatory preliminary defenses;
• assessment criteria;
• the possibility, in the case of serious critical remarks, to postpone the issuing of the Certificate by decision of the Academic Council.

In such cases, the student will be given one month to revise the Final Course Project based on written comments from opponents and other members of the Academic Council. The improved work may then be presented again at a repeated meeting of the Defense Committee, where the final decision on awarding the personal Course Completion Certificate will be made.

All these decisions and the approved procedures are being prepared for official publication in the Academic Council group and will then be transferred to our website. They will be used by all lecturers as mandatory regulations for the educational process at Nomadic University.

We are confident that the adoption of these rules strengthens the Nomadic University team’s commitment to quality education, increases trust in our Certificate, and enhances its prestige both among graduates and among our academic partners, especially when our Certificates become part of admission portfolios for international master’s programs.

We have no doubt that the higher requirements for choosing Final Course Project topics, the academic minimum for project content, and the procedure for public defenses will be understood and responsibly followed by both lecturers and students.

These rules create a clear framework for acquiring systematic knowledge in the proposed courses and for developing this knowledge further through the Final Course Project. They also shape the general academic attitude of Nomadic University from the moment of its foundation:

• to understand what is happening;
• to analyze how ongoing processes are connected;
• to develop new knowledge through the Final Course Project;
• to use this knowledge for building personal strategies.

I

n this way, we have reaffirmed for ourselves the old HSE slogan: “We learn not for school, but for life.”

With these achievements, we are entering the new Summer Semester. We are once again offering the most successful courses from the previous semester:

• Traditional Chinese Medicine;
• Law, Economics, Constitution;
• Civil Society.

We are also offering English-language courses:

• Digital Nomad Education and Careers;
• Actor-Publics and Protest Movements.

In addition, we are launching two new courses:

• International Instruments for the Protection of Human Rights;
• Shaolin Qigong Practices.

In the Spring Semester, we tested for the first time a separate payment model for the defense procedure. This includes the preparation of the project through individual work with the lecturer, the defense process itself, the work of the Defense Committees, the final meeting of the Academic Council to discuss the defenses, and the production and completion of personal Certificates awarded at the Graduation Ceremony.

Since preparing and conducting defenses requires significant time, effort, and direct expenses, we have decided to increase the fee for the public defense procedure from 50 to 100 GEL.

Students who plan to defend their Final Course Project must pay this fee to the lecturer no later than the third class of the course, after agreeing on the project topic with the lecturer in advance.

The requirements for preparing Final Course Projects, agreed with our international university partners from the Liberal Arts Education community, are now more strictly formalized and correspond to European academic standards.

The new Certificate received by Nomadic University graduates now includes a QR code leading to a page on our website. This page confirms the completed public defenses and the composition of the Defense Committees, making the process transparent and convincing for admission committees of international master’s programs.

Studying at Nomadic University is engaging. Publicly defending a Final Course Project is prestigious. Receiving a Certificate is a true celebration: a personal academic achievement formally documented.

At Global Nomad University, we speak Russian, English, and Georgian. Our students and faculty are multilingual, and we welcome all languages. We will help you communicate, be heard, and be understood.