Putin’s speech

I have posted the results of our group discussion.  These are our project ideas, plans and work schedule for this semester.

Cheers

project ideas

work schedule

Today I’d like to share with you a pic of my friend who has just sent me this. I think she is really talanted and sensitive painter even if she has never studied at special art school

This is the draft site proposal of the project that we are going to set up soon.

Audience

Journalism students of Central Asian universities and journalists interested in online journalism and using informational technologies in their activity.Preliminary users are ‘Beginners’ and our aim is to rise up their level to ‘Power users’. 

Purpose

To create a platform for young journalists from Central Asia to develop and improve their skills, both professional and technical, in order to integrate to online global society.  

Mission

Our mission is to create a team of young journalists from Central Asia able to concur with successful western journalists by encouraging them in developing professional skills, covering actual social issues and implementing new approaches in journalism activity. 

Content

The site consists of several main sections:

News – any kind of news related to site mission that site administrators and users find important and necessary to share.

Online master-class – here users may get information about western-style of writing news stories and feature stories. Professors of journalism department will be main consultants of running this section.

Ads – info about seminars, scholarships, workshops, exchange programs and so on.

Blogs – blogs of stories’ authors, site creators, users, journalists.  

Milestone

A short-term milestone list for web-site launch

·          set up a content management system

·          get 10 stories related to site content

·          prepare calendar list of actions and events

·          develop a strategy of running this site

·          install a feedback system

·          set up an online polling system 

Our team that consists of three students at the moment has a vision of this site. We also have some contacts from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan that will help us to run this site and add more useful links and sources for the site users. Moreover, we expect that some international and local organizations working in journalism field will also encourage our efforts. We need to know more about site managing system and implementing other kind of technical recourses that allows using multi-media to make this site useful and working. 

Shodiyor Eshaev

Zarifa Tajiyeva

Soleh Yahyayev

Kamilla Nurumbetova

Two graduate journalism students have been awarded KIMEP’ first Journalism Merit Scholarships. Assel Tleof from Kostanay and Lazzat Uskenbayeva, an international student from Tashkent, Uzbekistan, are the winners of the 65,000-tenge scholarships donated by journalism Professor Hal Foster. These are the first scholarships donated by a professor in KIMEP’s history, according to university administrators.

Tleof is a first-year graduate student. She has an undergraduate degree in journalism from Kostanay State University and work experience in public relations and politics.

She worked as a monitoring specialist for the Renaissance public relations agency in Almaty. And she did polling and other work in two political parties’ election campaigns. The job she did for the Otan and Asar parties dealt with helping candidates for elections at all levels of government, from local to national. She also participated in a work-study program in Rhode Island.

“I think this scholarship will be an impulse for further achievements for (the journalism) department development and big contribution to our lives,” Tleof said at a scholarship awards ceremony in January.

Uskenbayeva enrolled at KIMEP after her husband, Marat, won a scholarship to get an MBA here. Uskenbayeva is planning to become a public relations specialist after graduating. She has an undergraduate degree in IT management from Tashkent University of Information technologies.

She said it has been difficult to study in English instead of Russian, but she has enjoyed the challenge of KIMEP. Her interest in communication ethics prompted her to study the British comedian Sasha Baron Cohen’s spoofing of Kazakhstan.

For a long time, she was angry about Borat’s satirizing of Kazakhstan, which is her home country originally. Knowing her strong feelings about Borat, as a joke Dr. Foster presented her a special gift at the awards ceremony – a large photo of Borat in a very untasteful swimsuit.

Mr. Mahboob Khawaja, Dean of the College of Social Sciences, who attended the awards ceremony, said, “I am grateful to Hal Foster that he opened up this avenue and made himself a model for all of us to follow.” He said he hoped others at KIMEP would make scholarship donations some day.

Dr. Steven Green, Dean of Students Affairs, said this was the first he had heard of a professor at either KIMEP or other universities where he had served donating a scholarship.

A three-person committee of journalism professors selected the two scholarship winners from among six candidates on the basis of GPA and financial need. Dr. Foster had specified that he not be on the selection committee.

Gulnar Assanbayeva, the Department of International Journalism and Mass Communication’s recruitment manager, said, “All candidates deserved the scholarship, because they are dedicated students, wanting to continue their education. We wanted to encourage those who had just come to our department from other regions and countries. This is the first step toward truly encouraging our students that proves KIMEP’s slogan of changing society by personal contributions.”

Dr. Foster said he donated the scholarships because he wanted to “make a statement that I believe in the university and the journalism program.”

He noted that the “journalism program is developing rapidly, but some of the students need a little money to come here. Almaty is not a cheap city to live in; housing is expensive. And KIMEP’s tuition fee is not cheap.”

Dr. Foster originally planned to donate one scholarship. The journalism graduate program has many international students, and Dr. Foster knew many of them were struggling financially.

After seeing that most of the six applications were from Kazakh students, Dr. Foster decided to donate a second scholarship, stipulating that one scholarship go to an international student and one to Kazakh student.