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A DECADE OF WORLD ACHIEVEMENTS

2/9/2021

At the Kazakh National University named after al-Farabi, at a meeting of the Academic Council, a report on the results of the university's activities for a ten-year period was held under the leadership of a top manager of a higher school and a famous scientist, academician Galym Mutanov. The development of KazNU all these years was associated with the main goal set by the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan to enter the top 200 best universities in the world.

Under the leadership of Galym Mutanov KazNU named after Al-Farabi, as the flagship of Kazakhstani higher education, has developed a model for a new generation of higher education institution - University 4.0. By introducing this model based on the concept of "al-Farabi University Smart City", the core of which is the ideas of the great thinker al-Farabi, the university has achieved a harmonious symbiosis in the development of high-tech and spiritual and moral platforms. Leading the Global Hub of the UN Academic Impact for Sustainable Development for four consecutive terms, KazNU presented the University 4.0 model at the UN Headquarters in New York, where it was recommended for wide dissemination at the international level.

Thanks to the complex structural modernization based on the cluster approach and the introduction of a result-oriented management system, the KazNU team achieved a rapid growth in indicators in all areas of activity and achieved a fundamentally new quality of the university content. So, over the past 10 years, the number of university students has doubled, and the number of foreign students has increased by 20 times. The share of accredited educational programs has been increased from 6.5% to 95%. The number of joint and double-diploma education programs with leading foreign universities has increased 12 times. The number of specialties that have opened English departments at all levels of education has increased by 2.5 times, the share of which of the total number of specialties today is 70 percent. The “Digital University” model introduced at KazNU was highly appreciated by Microsoft, which shot and posted on its website a film about the advanced experience of the university. The university was the first in the country to launch massive open online courses on the moocs.kz platform, in the development of which the leading universities of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the Alliance of Silk Road Universities, uniting more than 150 universities of the Eurasian Economic Community and the CIS, are participating. Today KazNU is the only university in Central Asia in which, within the framework of a single educational cluster, centers of high-tech companies operate simultaneously: Hewlett-Packard, Cisco, Koniсa Minolta, Fujitsu, Samsung, Alcatel, Microsoft , Kaspersky Lab, Huawei and others.

By implementing the course for the integration of science, education and innovative production, KazNU approached the level of well-known world research universities. For 10 years, the total amount of research funding has increased 6 times. The university is the first and only higher education institution in Kazakhstan that has reached the mark of 1000 publications in the rating editions of Scopus per year. Every fifth article published by Kazakhstani authors in journals included in the Scopus database belongs to scientists from KazNU named after al-Farabi. KazNU became the first national university to open a postdoctoral program. In order to commercialize the results of R&D, start-up and spin-off companies were created, the number of which has increased by 10 times compared to 2010. Among the few universities in the post-Soviet space, KazNU launched the first Kazakhstan nanosatellites into space - "Al-Farabi-1" and "Al-Farabi-2".

On the initiative of academician Galym Mutanov, a large-scale project was launched to create the "Al-Farabi Scientific and Technological Valley", focused on the commercialization of scientific developments and the creation of high-tech and competitive industries. Foreign investors were attracted to the project, with whom agreements were signed in the amount of US $ 1 billion.

Within the framework of the "University 4.0" model, the activities of the university were aimed not only at training competitive personnel, but also at the spiritual formation of young people as citizens of the country and the world. Thanks to breakthrough social projects implemented on the basis of the spiritual and moral platform of the university, the share of students involved in the work of student self-government bodies, club and volunteer activities has doubled. The anti-corruption scientific and educational cluster created in KazNU has become the brain center of Kazakhstan in the formation of anti-corruption consciousness and culture of youth. Thanks to the active development of sports and physical culture, the university is the undisputed leader of student sports. Within the framework of the Rukhani Zhangyru program, together with the UN Alliance of Civilizations, the international project “Formation of Citizens of a Virtuous Society. Mission of modern universities ”. KazNU, together with leading foreign universities, created Al-Farabi centers in 12 countries of the world, where the Kazakh language and culture of the Kazakh people are widely studied and work is underway to create branches of the university on their basis.

Implementing the social package, the university staff has attracted almost 1.5 billion tenge for social scholarships for talented students for 10 years. Thanks to the creation of a unique "Keremet" Student Service Center that has no analogues in the world, students of KazNU use all the necessary services, including medical ones, without leaving the campus. The volume of the area of the campus infrastructure has grown by 1.5 times, of which most of it falls on social facilities built on the principles of public-private partnership. Among them: the House of Young Scientists for 500 places, a new library, DSP "Keremet", a swimming pool and others. Construction of the largest modern comfortable hostel in Kazakhstan has begun.

The introduction of two platforms at the same time - innovative and technological and spiritual and moral - gave a synergistic result, which can be judged by the promotion of KazNU in the international QS rating. Having moved forward by almost 500 positions and taking 165th place in 2020, it became the first Kazakhstani university to break into the top 200 best universities in the world. Being the leader of the Turkic and Islamic world, KazNU, according to the research results of the authoritative European rating "Academic Ranking of World Universities-European Standard", received a high mark "AA +" and became one of the leading European universities. KazNU is in the top 200 most environmentally friendly universities in the global UI Green Metric Ranking of World Universities, in the top 50 most technologically advanced universities in the world. International experts today highly appreciate the achievements of KazNU and call it "phenomenal" its rapid advancement in world rankings.

As the members of the Academic Council unanimously noted, this became possible due to outstanding leadership qualities, strategic vision of Galym Mutanov, corporate spirit and team cohesion. It is natural that KazNU entered the top 10 leading universities in the prestigious THE Awards Asia ranking in the Outstanding Leadership and Management Team nomination. And the head of the university himself was awarded the prestigious international award Amity Excellence Awards in the field of science, management and entrepreneurship at a global level.

For his outstanding contribution to the development of science and education, Galym Mutanov was awarded foreign state awards, such as: the title of Knight of the Order of the Academic Palm Branch (France), the Cross of the Order of Merit (Poland), the Order of Merit (Italy), the Order of the CIS (Moscow), the Gold Medal of the President Republic of Korea, etc. For scientific merits, Professor Mutanov was awarded the Gold Medal of the ISESCO Prize in Mathematics (Islamic Organization for Education, Science and Culture), the Gold Medal of M. Curie (Poland), the personalized gold medal of the International Academy of Higher Education “For Outstanding Achievements in the field of science and education ", etc.

The merits of Professor Mutanov in the field of science and education were marked with high national awards such as: the Barys Order of the III degree and the Parasat Order of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the title of Honored Worker of Science and Technology of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the best inventor of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

The team of thousands of al-Farabi KazNU, which has achieved global competitiveness and recognition under the leadership of an outstanding top manager and a prominent scientist, is proud of its achievements, sincerely thanks academician Galym Mutanov for the joint fruitful work and wishes him good health, prosperity, great human happiness and new achievements in the benefit of the development of education and science of the country!