Student Affairs Division
International Office
Strategic Plan, AY 2023-2024
The pandemics, online mode, geopolitical situation and natural disasters made universities to come up with new approaches to educational activities and services. Previous strategies lost their effectiveness in reaching potential incoming and outgoing students and partners. The International Office comes up with strategic objectives and initiatives in order to achieve the major goal – maintain and increase internationalization rate of the KIMEP University.
Strategic goals:
1. Increase incoming mobility rate.
Due to current geopolitical situation, an increasing number of European and American students/faculty members are looking for exchange opportunities in Russian speaking countries, which gives us an opportunity to attract more exchange students/faculty members and make our programs more balanced in terms of diversity.
Objective 1. Make KIMEP U more visible and attractive among potential incoming students
Initiatives:
- Develop and design new brochures, leaflets, videos, posts about KIMEP U, Almaty and Kazakhstan
- Identify potential target group among partner universities and initiate public awareness campaign through KIMEP U website, Instagram, Tik-Tok, Facebook and regular e-mail messages about academic programs, events, student life, etc
- Use KIMEP U outgoing students/faculty members as KIMEP ambassadors
Outcome measurement:
- Number of developed, designed and disseminated new brochures, leaflets, videos, posts about KIMEP U, Almaty and Kazakhstan
- Number of followers (including new), likes, shares
- Number of event participants
Objective 2. Strengthen collaboration with partner universities to recruit new students
Initiatives:
- Participate in exchange fairs through our partners
- Build close professional relations with active partners in order to make successful recruitment. (send the congratulation messages on significant dates such as national holidays, university anniversaries, New Year, etc, follow them in the social networks, invite them to join any virtual event or activity, etc.)
- Encourage partners to attend different KIMEP both offline and online events related to academic and student life if any (e.g KIRC)
- Participate in the partner’s orientation sessions
Outcome measurement:
- Number of international exchange events with KIMEP U, IO participation
- Number of active communications channels with international partners; their participation in the KIMEP U events (KIRK, recruitment and orientation sessions for outgoing students)
- Number of participations in the partner’s events and activities
Objective 3. Recruit KIMEP ambassadors among outgoing and incoming exchange students
Initiatives:
- Identify potential recruitment stars through regular communication with exchange students
- Involve exchange student into the events and activities for preparation
- Create the list of ambassadors
- Equip them with all needed promotional materials and knowledge
Outcome measurement:
Number of ambassadors
Number of exchange students involved in the event and activities preparation
Number of training sessions with the ambassadors
Objective 4. Recruit KIMEP ambassadors among outgoing and incoming faculty members
Initiatives:
- Communicate the possibility to disseminate the information about KIMEP with outgoing and incoming faculty members
- Provide the faculty members with the necessary promotion materials, letting them know all the updated information related to academic programs, upcoming events for faculty, etc
Outcome measurement:
Number of exchange faculty members involved in ambassadorship
Objective 5. Activate a cooperation with the partner universities with EFMD accreditation and with the focus on Central Asian Studies
Initiatives:
- Communicate the benefits of KIMEP academic program on Finance to the partner universities IO
- Communicate the benefits of KIMEP academic program on International Relations to the partner universities IO
Outcome measurement:
Number of positive responses from the universities
Number of incoming faculty/students
2. Ensure academic success and cultural adjustment of incoming students through comprehensive support program, events and activities
Social norms, values and behavior patterns differ significantly from country to country. Culture shock is a normal human reaction, however, if adjustment takes long time, exchange students most likely would not be happy with their experience. In order to ensure timely adjustment, the IO comes up with the following initiatives:
Objective 1. Provide pre admission and post admission counselling and comprehensive support of incoming students to ensure smooth adjustment to KIMEP U life.
Initiatives:
- Develop, design and disseminate brochures, posts, presentation and leaflets about KIMEP, Almaty Kazakhstan
- Schedule and organize orientation and advising sessions (both preadmission and post admission stage)
- Organize and hold extracurricular events and ensure student participation (welcome party, pizza party, birthday party, culture day, trips to nature, farewell)
- Focus group and followed up progress report with exchange students
Outcome measurement:
- Number of developed, designed and disseminated new brochures, leaflets, videos, posts about KIMEP U, Almaty and Kazakhstan
- Number of advising and orientation sessions and number of attendees
- Number and types of the events and their participants
- Focus group results and progress report submission
3. Ensure healthy number and high quality of outgoing students/faculty members
Due to current geopolitical situation, it is necessary to define and promote exchange opportunities in safe countries for KIMEP students/faculty members.
Objective 1. Work closely with partner universities in safe countries on outgoing exchange programs.
Initiatives:
- Initiate discussion with active partner universities on ways of increasing the places for outgoing exchange students if needed
- Ask partner universities to organize promotional sessions for KIMEP students
- Initiate discussion with active partner universities on ways of increasing the offers for outgoing faculty members if needed
Objective 2. Promote partner universities in safe countries for potential outgoing exchange students and their parents.
Initiatives:
- Develop, design and disseminate brochures, posts, presentation and leaflets about active partner universities;
- Schedule and organize orientation and advising sessions (both preadmission and post admission stage)
- Organize and hold extracurricular events and ensure outgoing student participation (culture day and alumni exchange)
- Conducting a mandatory survey on exchange program experience among students
Outcome measurement:
- Number of active partners in safe countries for outgoing exchange students
- Number of taking/ transferred courses by outgoing exchange students
- Number of promotional sessions from partner universities in safe countries
- Number of developed, designed and disseminated new brochures, leaflets, videos, posts about partner universities in safe countries
- Number of advising and orientation sessions and number of attendees
- Number of participants in organized events
- Focus group results and progress report submission
- Number of outgoing faculty members
4. Ensure data driven approach to the strategic planning and decision making
Data driven approach in strategic planning and decision-making is the only way to ensure effective and efficient implementation of the major goals. Paper based approach lacks transparency and may undermine academic integrity.
Objective 1. Ensure academic integrity of exchange program through development of relevant online tools
Initiatives:
- Develop and introduce course preapproval online tool to ensure timely and professional decision making
- Develop and introduce course transfer online tool to ensure timely and professional decision making
- Develop and implement application form for staff mobility
Outcome measurement
- students and faculty/staff satisfaction
- average wait time
Initiative (b): digitalize all processes for outgoing exchange administrative staff
Outcome: staff satisfaction
Objective 2: Create comprehensive international activity database of KIMEP University
Initiative:
- Create university database on international events, activities, projects, research and mobility.
- Create the university partners’ database
- Create mobility funds’ database (Erasmus, others)
- Improve current outgoing exchange students’ database
- Create incoming student’s database
Outcome measurement:
- Number of online tools
- Stakeholders’ satisfaction
5. Initiate new international partnerships with European and American style universities that may guarantee high quality education and safe environment for the KIMEP outgoing students/faculty members
Current geopolitical situation is characterized by a high degree of uncertainty. The major challenge for any partnership is safety of their outgoing students, because the military conflicts and worsening economic situation may significantly affect wellbeing of our students. That is why we are looking for new partner universities that may offer affordable conditions and located in the safe regions. In order to achieve this goal, the Office comes up with the following objectives and initiatives:
Objective 1. Identify safe and economically stable regions/countries and find potential partners that offer high quality educationInitiatives:
- Initiate discussion with active partner universities that meet our expectations and initiate networking with their partners
- Create a short list of promising potential partners and organize a series of meetings
- Sign partnership agreement and initiate mobility programs with new universities
- Participation in conferences on internationalization
Outcome measurement:
Number of partnership agreements with foreign universities, number of mobility calls, number of applications vs number of incoming/outgoing participants