July 29, 2021

AlmaU’s active collaboration with Lehigh University, USA goes to the next level

In January 2020 AlmaU and Lehigh University started a fruitful collaboration, with the participation of students and teachers of both institutions. In the frame of the Global Social Impact Fellowship, supported by the U.S. Embassy and funded by UniCEN - Central Asia University Partnerships Program which is implemented by the American Councils for International Education in Kazakhstan, more than 20 students and several faculty members of the two Universities have worked together to implement sustainable development education projects.

First project refers to the theme of sustainable education for school students (Save Tuba) where participants aim to create a smartphone app for school children, educating them about the sustainability issues and targeting the change of mindset.

Second project targets air pollution in Almaty where participants do research on this issue and propose solutions. Here smart city project innovations are being introduced throughout Kazakhstan, particularly in the country’s largest city, Almaty. These innovations are happening in the areas of health care, education, and safety/security, among many others. As Almaty continues to grow and develop into a major world capital, the need for it to be on the leading edge of the “smart cities” movement will only increase. This project will work with community organizations and leading universities in Kazakhstan, as well as students from Lingnan University in Hong Kong, to design and develop the next generation of smart city urban design innovations, and find ways to work with governmental and NGO entities to implement those solutions into the Kazakh capital*.

Lehigh and AlmaU students are working under the supervision of AlmaU faculty Ms. Aigerim Serikbekova (School of engineering management) and Ms. Aurora Díaz-Soloaga (School of management) and Dr. Khanjan Mehta (Vice Provost for Creative Inquiry Director of the Mountaintop Initiative
Lehigh University) and Dr. Dinissa Duvanova (Associate Professor, Lehigh University).

Within the framework of this project, AlmaU project coordinators visited Lehigh University in July 2021 together with the vice-rector for Academic Affairs, Assel Aryn, and the dean of the School of Engineering Management, Kuanysh Abeshev. During the visit they attended the Unconference on Impact Education and met with many top managers (Provost, vice provost, deans) and faculty of Lehigh University. The goal of those days was to look for further cooperation in fields like: exchanges, capacity building, joint projects, internationalization, and much more.

Furthermore, in July 2021, Lehigh representatives visited AlmaU where they met with top management, deans and faculty. Many meetings have been conducted during these days, allowing to strengthen cooperation and enlarging the number of joint projects. Guests together with AlmaU faculty met with the Akimat, the US Embassy, local industry leaders, universities and NGOs.

In October 2021 partners are preparing to host an international Summit dedicated to Sustainability development.

Here you can see photos of meetings in both universities: