College of Social Sciences

Strategic Plan: 2010-11 to 2012-13

Preamble

What is a world-class university? KIMEP has decided that

A world-class university should produce eminently qualified graduates with values, expertise, skills and knowledge which are consistent with and relevant to, the society in which they intend to serve.

The College of Social Sciences (CSS) wishes to become a world-class social science school that is school of preference for students wishing to embark on an English-language education that will prepare them for a career in an international setting or for further graduate education abroad. Thus, our vision is that our students will undertake programs of study at all levels that have been judged by the international academic community to be of a standard that makes their transition to further study abroad seamless. Thus, we are working towards having dual and joint graduate degree programs, initially at the graduate level, with world-class universities. We are also working towards international accreditation where that is possible in the social sciences. A by-product of this will be the enhanced local and international status of the CSS and, thus, KIMEP.

Objectives and Strategies

To achieve this grand vision we need to achieve the following four key objectives.

Objective 1:

To deliver a world-class student experience to academically qualified undergraduate and graduate students, regardless of their financial means, from Kazakhstan, and Central Asia, whose values are consistent with KIMEP values – namely, open-mindedness, tolerance, honesty, integrity and community spirit – so as to prepare them to further modernize and develop civil society Kazakhstan and the region.

Strategies:

1. Identify and recruit well qualified students from Kazakhstan

Recruiting qualified local students is an essential part of developing an effective and challenging learning environment that is a hallmark of any world-class university. The CSS is fully committed to recruiting students who share KIMEP’s values of open-mindedness, tolerance, honesty, integrity and community spirit. To see the level of importance of these values to applicants the entrance application process can involve the submission of an essay that address these values and the provision of information of any community service done by applicants. Our ability to attract qualified students is one of our major recruitment challenges. We are determined to enhance our visibility and recognition among key target groups. To do so, the College and its departments will engage in a re-branding process that position our degree program as a new brand. This will be achieved by learning about community perceptions of CSS and its departments and programs; by developing appropriate multi-media promotional material, at the College, departmental and degree program level, such as logos, mottos, and images that reflect our desire to serve Kazakhstan and the Almaty community; and by actively engaging in coordinated student recruitment efforts. This will involve the following actions.

2. Provide financial support for excellence

The CSS considers that support of excellence requires more merit-based scholarships, needs-based financial aid, undergraduate and graduate teaching, research, and administrative assistantships. This will involve the following actions.

3. Recruit well qualified graduate students from Central Asia by enhancing KIMEP’s excellent academic reputation in the region

The CSS can contribute to sustaining and enhancing KIMEP’s position as the leading university in Central Asia through its research and research centers, its distinctive graduate programs and its international collaborations. This will involve the following actions.

4. Design and deliver an innovative cross-disciplinary PhD Program in the Social Sciences

The CSS wishes to develop and offer is Kazakhstan’s first cross-disciplinary PhD program in the social sciences. It goal is to produce graduates with the knowledge of the social sciences, and its research and pedagogical methods, capable of becoming university-level teachers and researchers able to contribute to the further modernization of, and the develop civil society in, Kazakhstan and the region. To achieve the following steps will be taken.

Objective 2:

To design a world-class learning experience at the graduate and undergraduate levels.

Strategies:

1. Provide programs of study that stakeholders consider provide the relevant skills, knowledge and attributes (especially, ethic behavior, critical thinking, and desire for life-long learning) that program graduates need for their future careers or postgraduate study. The CSS recognizes that it has an important array of stakeholders, including: our faculty and staff, our students, their relatives, our alumni, future employers, local universities, local specialists in related fields, and partner international universities. We will communicate and consult with these stakeholders in a variety of ways on key issues, and use their knowledge and suggestions to improve the CSS program. This will involve the following actions.

2. Raise academic standards by making continuous improvements to our academic standards.  To achieve this ambition, our students need:

• motivating to achieve at their highest possible academic level;
• enhanced English skills, particularly of reading and writing;
• course syllabi, methods of instruction and methods of assessment that reflect the continuous improvements needed to improve our academic standards;
• learning resources that support the desired improvements in academic standards; and
• studying and counseling support for those who fall behind, or who are at risk of so doing.

These measures will permit KIMEP to gradually increase the GPAs of its graduates. This will involve the following actions.

3. Develop questioning attitudes in students by emphasizing critical thinking skills across all courses in all Programs. This is a core shared intellectual value for the CSS. If knowledge is the raw materials of learning, and values its compass, critical thinking is its blueprint. Every CSS Program builds critical thinking skills into every course.  However we must also monitor and evaluate if and how our efforts are building the critical thinking skills of our students.  This involves the following actions

4. Care meticulously for the well-being of student.  This means faculty mentors guiding them through their academic studies and counseling them on their further intellectual development, so as to ensure that they become world-class graduates. The CSS is working hard to improve our existing student mentoring arrangements, under which all our majors are assigned a faculty mentor to guide them on academic matters. The arrangements are voluntary and the discussions are treated as confidential. Because our curriculum, instruction, and university requirements are unlike those students are familiar with in local schools, we recognize that our students need effective mentoring. To reduce the drop-out rate caused by poor academic performance – which may be associated with inadequate mentoring – we need to consider the need to review and revise our mentoring arrangements and to build more-meaningful student-faculty partnerships. This will involve the following actions.

5. Use assessment methods that allow students to demonstrate (1) their acquired knowledge, skills and critical thinking capacity to the level required to achieve the articulated course assessed learning outcomes; and (2) that they have achieved the major, minor or program-assessed learning outcomes – the knowledge, skills and critical thinking capacity – to the level required to achieve the articulated course assessed learning outcomes. The CSS also recognizes that we must monitor and improve the transparency of course assessment systems. This will involve the following actions.

6. Ensure that the graduates have acquired the required and relevant knowledge and skills upon graduation, ascertained by the conduct of exit tests that demonstrate their achievement or otherwise of the required minor, major and program learning outcomes. In a very important sense, however, the ultimate exit test is success in the labor market or, particularly for the Social Sciences, in further higher education. The CSS considers the issue of exit tests profoundly important, for it raises a central quality assurance issue: How can we demonstrate that our graduates have achieved what we expect them to have achieved?  This will involve the following actions.

7. Ensure that the graduates have acquired the required and relevant knowledge and skills upon graduation, ascertained by the assessment of stakeholder perceptions of the appropriateness and quality of graduates. The CSS will gather evidence that demonstrates that quality of our graduate degree Programs and the research that underpins those Programs. This will facilitate evaluation, planning, comparison with the performance of other years and making improvements, and objective demonstration of excellence to potential funders and partners, and will also enhance confidence within the College, KIMEP and the community-at-large. This will involve the following actions.

Objective 3:

To deliver a world-class teaching and learning experience at the undergraduate, masters and doctoral levels.

Strategies:

1. Recruit and develop world-class faculty, which, in turn, requires a stable faculty of whom, the vast majority (at least 80%) should have terminal degrees,

• with an increasing proportion being Kazakhstani nationals (the target being 30%), including those returning from completed doctoral study overseas; and
• those Kazakhstani nationals without a terminal degree will be given every opportunity and significant support to enable them to obtain a one.

This goal can be reached both by upgrading the qualifications of existing local faculty and by recruiting new local faculty with terminal degrees. Our preference is the former approach, wherever possible. We do, however, see merit in recruiting young Kazakhstani terminal degree holders in short-term positions, such as Post Doctoral Fellows, to build up our research profile whilst orienting it towards Kazakhstani and Central Asian issues, including the writing of case studies. This will involve the following actions.

2. Retain committed faculty by adequately rewarding them on the basis of a fair evaluation of their performance. The CSS recognizes that it must undertake an objective evaluation of faculty performance to clearly facilitate performance differentiation.  This will identify high performing faculty, ensuring that they are adequately rewarded, in turn ensuring their continued commitment. This will involve the following actions.

3. Provided faculty development support to build performance of all faculties, recognizing that performance improvement is central to continued employment with KIMEP. This requires us to take all possible steps to support local faculty seeking to upgrade their qualifications, and to promote and support the continuous improvement in the teaching and research performance of all faculty. This will involve the following actions.

4. Identify and assist underperforming committed faculty, thereby ensuring that they receive appropriate faculty development support to build up their performance. This will not only improve performance but also encourage their continued employment at KIMEP. The CSS is fully committed to developing its entire faculty according to their needs and career aspirations.

5. Conduct applied and case-study research that improves the classroom experience by expecting faculty who conduct research to offer challenging courses -particularly at the senior undergraduate levels – that draws on their own research output. The CSS faces the challenge that foreign faculty, without sufficient Russian and Kazakh language skills to permit original research, cannot conduct research on Kazakhstan and the Central Asia region with the subsequent limitations on their teaching. Thus, local faculty must be encouraged and rewarded for undertaking the research required to develop relevant teaching-oriented case studies.

6. Build the Kazakhstani Faculty, so as go to increase their proportion in our professorial ranks. This involves upgrading the qualifications of existing local faculty and recruiting new local faculty with terminal degrees. Our preference is the former approach. We recognize, however, that periodically new faculty will be required, so every effort must be made to recruit Kazakhstani nationals who return home after completing their doctoral studies abroad. This will involve the following actions.

7. The CSS recognizes the importance of the continuous improvement of all faculty, but especially local faculty who have demonstrated a commitment to KIMEP. We recognize the need to support those who wish to conduct and publish research that will help convert their Candidate of Science or Master’s degrees into PhD equivalence; those who prefer to undertake a PhD abroad on leave without pay, and perhaps require assistance in obtaining an Erasmus Mundus faculty mobility grant or a scholarship; or those who prefer to remain in Almaty and undertake our proposed interdisciplinary PhD, subject to Ministry licensing. We must be able to support all of these options. This will involve the following actions.

Objective 4:

To build institutional networks that facilitates the linking of specialist scholars and junior faculty in Kazakhstan and Central Asia with scholars of international repute in their fields, with a view to:

• to develop and submit proposals for infrastructural and project-based funding for research and graduate program (to doctoral level);
• to conduct joint research projects;
• to arrange international seminars and conferences;
• to facilitate faculty exchanges;
• to support partner institution’s graduate, post-doctoral and advanced research on, or relevant to, Central Asia;
• to support the development of the research and pedagogical knowledge and skills of regional network members by offering graduate-level training (to doctoral level) in social sciences research and teaching;
• to develop and deliver:
  • joint (articulated), dual (double), or even franchised graduate degree programs (to doctoral level) within the social sciences;
  • graduate study abroad opportunities (to doctoral level), with full credit transfer;
  • graduate internship opportunities (to doctoral level) with full credit transfer;
  • masters- and doctoral-level courses, offered under the auspices of KIMEP’s International Summer Program, subsumable within our existing masters degree and proposed PhD program;
  • e-learning objects and the blended learning provision of graduate courses (modules) (to doctoral level); and
  • specialist KIMEP certificate programs in conjunction with academics from partner institutions, under the auspices of KIMEP’s International Summer Program.

Strategies:

1.       Conduct world-class research in the social sciences, which must, over time, focus on shaping market transition and the development of civil society in Kazakhstan and the region in a global setting. This would enable us to deliver joint masters and doctoral level programs of study that serve the needs of Kazakhstan and Central Asia more generally, thereby raising KIMEP’s global and regional profile. This is, indeed, the focus of our three research centers – Center for Central Asian Studies, Center for European Studies and the Central Asian Center for Media and Society. Under their auspices, world-class research will be promoted and undertaken that will raise the global and regional profile of KIMEP. This will involve the following actions.

2.       Develop and sustain connections to the global academic community, so as to:

• demonstrate the quality of programs of study through:
  • international program accreditation; and
  • the development and delivery of joint (articulated) or dual (double) graduate degree programs;
• add value to the teaching and learning experience by having
  • study abroad opportunities, with full credit transfer;
  • internship opportunities, with full credit transfer;
  • courses taught by distinguished international faculty, under the auspices of KIMEP’s International Summer Program; and
  • assistance in developing e-learning objects and the blended learning provision of selected graduate course.

The CSS is committed to collaborating with partner universities on research and graduate studies. This will involve the following steps actions.

A cross-disciplinary PhD program (research: 40% taught: 60% research and internship) is being developed and it is expected that it will be launched in 2011-12.

This would be achieved by connecting KIMEP to the EU funded e-Silk Highway (CAREN), which would link it to EU academic e-networks, and through them to the rest of the academic world, that would enable KIMEP staff and graduates, and those of other universities in Almaty, to participate in modern forms of life-long learning.