Fourth year students of Al-Farabi KazNU, studying in specialities “Heat Power Engineering”, “Electric Power Engineering”, will be able to get a job in JSC AlES upon graduation. This was announced by Deputy Chairman of the Board – Chief Engineer of the Energy Company Gaziy Ismukhambetov. He said the intention of JSC AlES to establish a promising cooperation with the university on employment of its graduates of profile specialties.

The proposal was made during the signing of the Memorandum of Mutual Co-operation between Al-Farabi Kazakh National University and JSC Almaty Electric Stations. Gaziy Ismukhambetov acquainted the partners with the current state of affairs of the company, shared the prospects for the development of the electric power industry in the Republic of Kazakhstan, spoke about the tasks of reducing the use of coal and the transition of power plants production to gas, as well as – the plans to modernize the production of JSC AlES.

The power engineer also noted the need of the company in specialists – hydropower engineers, which are currently not trained by universities in Kazakhstan. The discussion was also about the possibility of training these specialists by Kazakhstani universities for Kapshagai, Moynak and Shardara HPPs, which are part of Samruk-Energy JSC. The tasks relevant for power engineers were received with interest in the leading higher education institution of the country, and the parties agreed to consider the possibility of establishing a speciality “Hydropower Engineering” on the basis of Al-Farabi KazNU. They also discussed the issue of training of energy production workers using distance technologies.

During the negotiations, Yernar Sandybayev, Managing Director for General Affairs of JSC AlES, noted the good level of knowledge and skills of current graduates of Kazakhstani universities. However, he noted that the qualifications of graduates do not fully meet the requirements of production. Power engineers expressed readiness for constructive dialogue with KazNU named after Al-Farabi to work out specific solutions and algorithms of actions in order to train specialists taking into account the needs of Almaty stations.

Professor Saltanat Bolegenova, Head of the Thermophysics and Technical Physics Department, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, and Professor Sandugash Kodanova, Head of the Plasma Physics, Nanotechnology and Computer Physics Department, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, told about the presence of modern educational and laboratory base in KazNU named after Al-Farabi, good equipment of modern equipment of educational laboratories. They noted that the university has updated educational programmes. Now the training of students is implemented on 542 educational programmes, 62 of them – double diploma with universities in Asia, Europe, Russia, USA. In addition, 13 innovative educational programmes have been developed and implemented, including engineering, manufacturing and construction industries, information technologies, and others. The university has signed more than 30 new co-operation agreements with the world’s leading universities of the USA, Great Britain, Japan, France, UAE, Turkey.

The professors also proposed to involve high-class practitioners of JSC AlES production departments in the educational process and emphasized their readiness to cooperate with the company both in research work and in employment of students and graduates of the university.

The agreements were fixed by the memorandum, which provides for the development of joint educational programmes, projects; organization of trainings, seminars, master classes for both university students and employees of the enterprise. The memorandum also includes a clause concerning the exchange of practical experience and knowledge in the field of physical and engineering sciences, hydrology and ecology, personnel training for Kazakhstani and international markets and many other types of partnership.

It is separately noted that the enterprise is defined as a base of practice and promotes the organization of industrial, research, pre-diploma practice for university students for the purpose of further employment. It is also provided for scientific internship, research and development work by master’s and doctoral students of the university at the enterprise.