Personality and Career Development Center

In June 2005, the establishment of the Leadership Training Center (LTC) was officially announced at the Kazakhstan-American Free University (KAFU) in Ust-Kamenogorsk. Initially, the LTC operated with the support of the AES Corporation and the Eurasia Foundation, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). In November 2011, the LTC was renamed the Career and Personal Development Center.

The Center’s goal is to provide training and educational programs to improve managerial skills, leadership potential, and broaden the horizons of middle and senior managers, as well as students and faculty of KAFU and the public of East Kazakhstan.

The Career and Personal Development Center specializes in delivering high-quality educational services through professional development programs in the fields of advanced training, staff retraining, and deepening professional knowledge, skills, and competencies, in line with the university’s main priorities, in the following areas:

• Organizing and conducting MBA programs for executives;
• Organizing and conducting business trainings;
• Organizing and conducting language courses;
• Organizing distance-learning courses for individual subjects at U.S. universities;
• Organizing and implementing projects in cooperation with city organizations.

Director of the Career and Personal Development Center

Alexandra Gennadyevna Astafyeva

Work phone: +7 (7232) 50-50-13

Office: 206

A specialist with a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree is a professional manager ready to perform the functions of an organizer and leader of an enterprise (or division) in any industry of the economy.
The MBA program involves not only the ability to acquire new knowledge, creatively process it, and apply it in business processes.

The greatest challenge lies in the requirement to abandon habitual and comfortable ways of thinking, many business habits, and behavioral stereotypes. Not every top manager or company leader is ready to admit that some of their management methods are ineffective and require change. Only after going through the long and challenging MBA program does a manager begin to realize the extent of their personal transformation.

The Kazakhstan-American Free University, aiming to meet the market’s demand for highly professional managers, has created a domestic MBA program based on Western standards.
The program’s key distinctive feature is its practical focus in preparing managers for Kazakhstani and international business, with an emphasis on international MBA standards.

The main goal of all MBA programs at KAFU is to develop in students the system of knowledge and skills of a professional manager, necessary for making effective decisions in managing companies in the modern, rapidly changing Kazakhstani markets. The program aims to prepare managers with a strategic vision of the organization and its external environment, who make decisions, define, and develop organizational values.

Main directions of the program:

• Acquiring knowledge to understand company operations
• Developing skills that increase the efficiency of managerial decision-making in a dynamic environment
• Gaining professional communication skills, teamwork abilities, and leadership qualities
• Promoting overall educational and cultural development, and skills in systemic thinking
• Developing advanced analytical, evaluative, and consulting skills
• Building a broad base of skills and knowledge through an integrated, thematic approach to core academic disciplines
• Improving conditions for personal development, particularly in managing one’s career
• Acquiring specialized management experience in selected areas through electives and thesis writing

Faculty

A key element of the MBA program is the instructor, who differs significantly from a typical university lecturer. An MBA instructor must be able to work with adult audiences and have the competence to answer any business-related question, backed by extensive practical experience.

At KAFU, the MBA program follows this exact approach to faculty selection, which has proven successful. The instructor’s role is to engage students, present the problem, and demonstrate approaches to solving it. Students, through independent work and maximum effort, must find the optimal solution. The relationship between instructors and students is viewed not as “leader–follower,” but as partners in the educational process—though the instructor still evaluates students’ knowledge and work.

Teaching Methodology

The MBA program at KAFU uses a variety of teaching methods: lectures, case studies, business games, training sessions, individual and group projects, presentations, and independent study. The system is designed so that each subject serves as a stepping stone toward acquiring new knowledge and skills.

Under this program, students:

• Study and analyze the main and functional aspects and methods of management that form the foundation of a manager’s work
• Gain an understanding of the need for continuous professional growth as a business leader, both during the program and throughout their career
• Develop effective analytical, organizational, and leadership skills
• Learn how to implement change and make decisions driven by environmental, business, market, economic, social, political, and technological factors
• Improve their business and conversational English skills

The MBA for Executives program at KAFU is designed in accordance with the structure of international MBA programs. It includes general-purpose courses with a strong practical orientation (30% theory, 70% exercises and practice).

Core MBA Courses

Managerial Economics

• Managerial Accounting
• Corporate Finance
• Business Ethics
• Entrepreneurial Law
• Marketing
• International Business
• Project Management
• Human Resource Management
• Corporate Governance
• Strategic Management
• Fundamentals of Scientific Research

Total duration of the MBA program: 10 months.

The training programs are based on the leadership education curriculum of the Darden School of Business Administration at the University of Virginia. The business programs of this university are among the top ten educational programs in the United States, featuring teaching methods that include studying real-life business cases from various companies, team building, and decision-making in resolving these situations.

Instructors from the Kazakhstan Institute of Management, Economics and Strategic Research (KIMEP) — KAFU’s partner for this project — have mastered the case-based program and adapted it to Kazakhstan’s conditions with the goal of transferring future training facilitation skills to KAFU faculty. The purpose of these trainings is to help senior and middle managers enhance their leadership qualities, expand their approaches to leadership, explore leadership methods of influence, and understand the manager’s role within an organization.

Training programs offered by the Career and Personality Development Center:

• Effective Sales
• Sales Techniques
• Customer Service
• Conflict Management
• The 25th Hour: Effective Time Management
• The Manager as a Translator of Corporate Culture
• Situational Leadership – A Coaching Approach
• Effective Manager
• Managing People in an Organization
• Leadership for Strategic Change

Upon completion of the training programs, participants receive a certificate.

The Career and Personal Development Center offers the opportunity to develop multi-level English language courses in the following areas:

• Preparatory courses for applicants to the American Program
• English language courses for 11th-grade school students in the city
• English language courses for 3rd-year college students
• English language courses for admission to Master’s programs
• English and Kazakh language courses from levels A1 to B2
• English language courses for professional and academic purposes
• English language courses for university executives
• English language courses for university faculty
• Professional courses for translators

A certificate is awarded upon completion of the courses.

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The development of distance learning as a new and effective technology in the field of education in Kazakhstan is in a stage of intensive yet challenging growth. Many universities in the Republic have engaged in the process of creating conditions for the advancement of distance learning. KAFU actively works on integrating modern educational technologies into the learning process.

Since 2003, KAFU has offered students the opportunity to take distance learning courses at U.S. universities, including:

• Seattle Pacific University
• LeTourneau University
• Indiana Wesleyan University
• Ohio Christian University

in the following disciplines:

• International Marketing
• Financial Management
• Human Resource Management
• Organizational Behavior
• Fundamentals of Entrepreneurship

Upon completion of the course, students receive a Western-standard certificate.

Joint Project on Collaborative Educational Activities between the Kazakhstan-American Free University and Secondary School No. 24

This project involves joint educational activities within the continuous education system “school–university” and ensures the continuity of levels in lifelong learning, providing various forms and durations of study. Within the framework of this project, the organization and implementation of the educational process are carried out for the disciplines English language at KAFU and Informatics at Secondary School No. 24.

Photographs of Participants in the Trainings and Seminars of the Career and Personality Development Center