GoodGeist
A podcast on sustainability, hosted by Damla Özlüer and Steve Connor, brought to you by the DNS Network. Looking at sustainability issues, communications, and featuring global guests from a wide variety of sectors such as business, NGOs and government.
GoodGeist
Driving Change Through Education, with Laura Karabossova
In this episode we talk to Dr. Laura Karabossova, a trailblazer in educational leadership and sustainability, who has journeyed from a childhood in a rural village in post-Soviet Kazakhstan to become the director of Aktobe University. We talk to Laura about transforming higher education, steering educational reform and nurturing the next generation of climate leaders in a rapidly changing global landscape.
In our conversation, Laura shares her insights on the integration of sustainability and also social justice into the curriculum, the burgeoning role of transdisciplinary research and collaboration, and creating innovative solutions to climate challenges.
Follow GoodGeist for more episodes on sustainability, communications and how creativity can help make the world a better place.
Good Geist, a podcast series on sustainability hosted by Damla Özler and Steve Connor, brought to you by the DNS Network.
Speaker 2:Hello, hello everyone, you are listening to Good Guys, the message on sustainability which is brought to you by the DNS Network, the global network of agencies dedicated to making the world a better place. This is Damla from Mira Agency, istanbul, and.
Speaker 3:This is Steve from Creative Concern in Manchester. This podcast series explores global sustainability issues, how they communicate and what creativity can do to make positive change happen.
Speaker 2:So in this episode we're going to talk to Dr Laura Karabosova, director of the Aktobe University in Kazakhstan. Besides being in charge of the biggest university of its region, dr Karabosova is an expert in higher and transnational education, change management and language in education policy.
Speaker 3:She is also a member of the National Commission on Women's Affairs and Family Demographic Policy. Under the President of Kazakhstan, educational excellence and organizational leadership have been her focal points, and she is the go-to person to ask about cultivating a new generation of climate leaders, I believe. So, laura, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to Damna and myself.
Speaker 4:Hello everyone. Thank you so much for inviting me for this podcast.
Speaker 3:Amazing. So we're going to get straight into it, laura, and ask you. Ask you, first of all, a question that we always love to ask, which is hearing about our guests' backgrounds. Tell us about your personal journey to becoming a senior leader of an academy.
Speaker 4:Before I go on to talk about my background, just a couple of words about my country in case our audience is not aware of it. Kazakhstan is the largest landlocked country in the world and it is the ninth largest overall, with around 20 million people. And Kazakhstan gained its independence in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and since then it's been growing and developing as a country with the highest human capital development. Well, about my background I was born in a village and I grew up during the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ensuing crisis. And when I reflect about my journey to education and how I came to education, of course I go back to my childhood and to the village, where just a few occupations were available to the people, and during that period, many people in the village, both men and women, were engaged in agricultural work. Men and women were engaged in agricultural work and in my surroundings there were just a very few educated and working women and, of course, my mom and my aunt. They were both teachers and now they are retired. And of course, I was immersed to education from my early days, from my early childhood and in my preschool years I used to accompany my mom to go to school for extracurricular activities, so I could observe her and I could be engaged, and my mom and my aunt so busy women in household chores, and I could observe how they could dress, you know, and they could become elegant and confident women as they dressed up to go to school and work. And I think this had a very profound impact on me and on my perceptions of women, of women's capabilities and maybe my first profession as well. So even our games and my sister's games were all around teaching, because teaching was the most prestigious profession for me and maybe the only profession I had a very good familiarity with. And so maybe no coincidence and no surprise that later I decided to become a teacher. So later, of course, I joined one of the best selective schools in the city. I moved to the city and I excelled in sciences. I had an opportunity to work with professors at the university, but again my teachers tried to influence me to opt for a career in medicine, since I was very excellent in biology or engineering or science or political sciences. But I couldn't change my mind, because now I think this is because of having very few no, maybe role models in engineering or in sciences. So I never changed my mind.
Speaker 4:So I began my journey in education with an undergraduate study in teaching, bachelor of Teaching. Then of course at that time I had a lot of extensive experience in going to schools, first had experience of teaching, then of course my interest shifted a little bit towards educational management. So later I applied for a master's degree in educational leadership and management at the University of Warwick in the UK a truly transformative time when I read a lot, I learned a lot about different educational systems internationally and of course I had a degree with distinction. And later when I was back to Kazakhstan I was not only a teacher but I became a professional with a broader understanding of educational field overall. And my dissertation was about high education reforms and since then I think transformations and reforms of high education has become my main focus. Then later I worked in a think tank as an analyst, then as a researcher, then later as a postdoc analyst, then as a researcher, then later as a postdoc.
Speaker 4:And of course I would never imagine, I would never dream about a career of a university president or university rector. I would never imagine that. But I was step by step, I was just pursuing my interests, I just wanted to be. I dreamt about becoming a very well-known professor with an international profile, but of course, I'm from a very humble background and I received this education good education thanks to the support of the government, thanks to this kind of scholarships, and I always had this feeling of about giving back to my country, about paying back to my country.
Speaker 4:Then, later, when I was offered promoted to the position of a vice rector for academic affairs, I saw that it was an ideal position for making change that I dreamt about. But when I started transforming the regional university where I'm working now, I understood that for truly transforming the big university, being a vice-rector is not enough, because I needed more power, so I decided to run for the position of the rector. So now it's my fourth year and I'm the youngest rector in the country so far and one of the very few female rectors of a huge state university. And this is my journey, how it has been challenging. At the same time, it's been very rewarding and incredible the journey from the researcher to the university president. So, yeah, this is the way how I came, and I've just started, I think.
Speaker 2:Laura, this is a great story and it just tells me that change can only happen with passion and ambition together and working very hard for those passions. Because you had that passion inside you, you followed it, but you also had the ambition to make impact, to change something, and that's really inspiring. So up until now, for almost a year, we have been talking with a variety of guests about different aspects of sustainability, which is the core change-making subject, I think. But until this moment, we only had one more topic on this with Joy, which was aired last week, and this will be the second one that we will dive into education. So let's start with the bigger picture here. How does higher education address social justice?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think that education actually is a very powerful tool in addressing social justice issues such as equity and equality, and I know that in 2025, equity, equality, inclusivity are going to be the major trends globally in the sector of higher education. And, of course, in higher education, we address issues of equity, equality in all aspects of education and, of course, it is about education, research and the community service three aspects which are very powerful. And let me just a little bit elaborate on this question based on my own experience as a university rector, and now I'm working in a regional, major, comprehensive university which serves around 14,000 students. We are not in the capital, of course, but we are very much embedded in the region and we serve the needs of the region. The first aspect, the way we address sustainability. Of course, it is about giving access. I like Canadian Professor Jay Knight's definition of people's university. So, according to this definition, we are really a people's university where we really give access to students from diverse and disadvantaged backgrounds. So half of our students come from rural areas and many of our students come from disadvantaged and privileged socioeconomic backgrounds.
Speaker 4:And, first of all, we, of course, we pay attention to widening these two axes. Of course, we are very much keen on about hiring our standards, about academic quality, about competition. At the same time, we bear in mind that widening access and providing this access to wider population is very important. So every year, for instance, the number of students opting for different kind of financial packages including tuition-free, different kind of discounts, different kind of support increasing and the parents and the students keep requesting this kind of access, keep requesting this kind of access. So annually we provide access to around 400 students so they can cover their basic needs and the tuition fees so they can stay at the university.
Speaker 4:The second important aspect is about equitable selection process. So from last year on, we are partnering with the Scottish University, heriot-watt. So together with Heriot-Watt, we are now training more than 400 students in three important majors. And, of course, in order to get access to the campus of Heriot-Watt here in Aktobe, students need to demonstrate very high level of English language proficiency and they have to take the IELTS exam, which is also very costly for many families.
Speaker 4:So what we are doing is we actually have moving campaigns to different rural places, to different cities around Kazakhstan, and so we can offer them an alternative to the IELTS exam, which is the English language test, which is free of charge, of course, and it's one of the also basic aspects of widening equitable selection process, entrance process as well. And, of course, community-based research is another aspect. Our professors are working very hard in devising and developing different mobile applications, for instance, in order to help different impaired students, students with different hearing opportunities or students with problems with vision or students which have difficulties with movement and the skeleton system, and the professors are now developed based on their research. Our professors are developing different kinds of mobile applications and they are available. They are uploading them to different like Apple market or Play market systems, so they are widely available to the people system, so they are widely available to the people. Actually, there are many ways in which universities try and strive to address sustainability and social just issues.
Speaker 3:So, laura, I mean that's amazing, and I love the fact that we have so many linkages between the UK and the South and Kazakhstan. That's great. The um although we are an international podcast stand alone. I understand that I'm not just purely taking the UK frame of reference, but um. On that last subject, laura, and sustainability, uh, for education, I'm sure for you as a leader in education, there are so many different sets of skills in the 21st century that you need to focus on, like digital literacy, how you collaborate. Ethics must be a huge topic for you as well, and now we've got to add the understanding of the climate crisis into and other skill sets there for you to be able to start to develop this new generation of experts to help us tackle the climate crisis.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think these, like new skills like climate sensitivity or environmental awareness, are still in their infancy in education systems in Central Asia or in the post-Soviet context.
Speaker 4:But still, yeah, of course, digital literacy like skills of the 21st century digital literacy is very important, especially with the appearance of AI, we are talking a lot about digital literacy. And, of course, critical thinking is very important and the collaboration All these skills are very important and they are vital, but I think these skills alone are not enough for sustainability. And now we started talking, of course, about climate sensitivity. Yeah, we started talking about new curriculum, but still, a lot of activism, a lot of actions in extracurricular activities. We just started talking about climate crisis. You know, just started talking about them, about including them into our curricula. Again, let me mention our collaboration with Heriot-Watt University, where we launched this program.
Speaker 4:Petroleum engineering Like in Kazakhstan, we used to have traditionally have this petroleum engineering majors and we are located in the oil and the gas rich region here in Western Kazakhstan, not far from the Caspian Sea. But now is the period. What we are talking about energy transition and energy management and, of course, about renewable energy, and all these dimensions are new to us and we are just bringing all these aspects of new education into our curriculum. Bringing all these aspects of new education into our curriculum and I think, apart from all these skills of the 21st century, climate awareness, environmental awareness, all these sensitive issues should be incorporated in the curriculum, but I think it can take a little bit slow. Yeah, changing the titles of curricula or coming up with new curricula is one thing, but the second question is who will teach right, how we should upskill, how we should retrain our people, our faculty and our trainers who will be working with these new dimensions of the curricula?
Speaker 2:Well, that's a very interesting question, and it's combined with the different aspects of climate action and sustainability, because when we say climate action, what immediately pops up in people's mind is the activism, and this area is still seen as kind of an activist's job. But when we say sustainability, the business angle also comes into the perception. Does the job market push for qualified sustainability experts to be trained by the academy, or is this also a matter that we should all look into?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I agree with you. Whenever we hear the word climate change, we immediately think about activists, we immediately think about some kind of movements or some kind of organizations or transnational organizations. But now, even in our area, in the region not in the capital we see that the business also putting this climate sensitivity on the agenda. I've recently been talking to one of our partners, one of the banks in Kazakhstan, and when they started presenting themselves, I was really surprised when they mentioned sustainability, their activities in this sustainable dimension. They were really proud of their activities in sustainable mode and they were actually bringing it into our attention as one of their strengths.
Speaker 4:And I see that now even business, banks, some other organizations, are trying to change. Even in higher education, we see that now we have international university ranking systems like Times Higher Education or QS, and now we see that all these kind of ranking systems including sustainability, one of the major aspects. So, unfortunately, maybe in the university sector around the world, all these changes are coming externally rather than coming from bottom up right. We are not really, yeah, but still, universities are very adaptive, we are trying to be adaptive to all these kind of external forces and the climate change is becoming part of our climate sensitivity. Environmental awareness is becoming part of our corporate culture and the corporate discussions now.
Speaker 3:So, laura, I was going to ask you about the sort of two sides of a university's mission the developing the future talent that we need to save the world, but also the, the kind of research mission. I think you've talked quite a bit about talent and and the, the teaching and the pedagogy of your university, but on the research side and research papers and research partnerships in the sustainability field what's happening in that space for you as a university?
Speaker 4:tell us a little bit more about that and, yeah, over the decade, especially over the past maybe five years, there has been a huge interest in transdisciplinary research on climate issues. So far, yeah, one, of course research is very dependent on funding, on sponsors, of course. One source of funding is our national sources of funding. We also try to drive our national priorities in the country. On the other hand, transnational sponsors like, for instance, erasmus, is working very well in motivating scholars across the world to really start researching these climate issues.
Speaker 4:So just recently my colleagues I remember my colleagues were collaborating with scholars from another university in the capital, so they were trying to come up with a kind of a proposal to tackle this climate issue from different angles. Like environmental researchers I remember the medical researchers, biologists and some different kind of researchers. They were coming to tackle this issue. Yeah, of course this research aspect will be growing, I think, in the next coming years and of course it will be depending on the funds. But I see that many international companies, many international organizations are really interested in furthering this agenda and I think many more will be coming in the next years.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, thanks Lara. I'll pass back over to Damla, but it's so true that the interdisciplinary nature of tackling climate change is fascinating, isn't it? Because you can have social scientists, you can have people in humanities, technical engineers and scientists. It's a fascinating space when all of that collaboration is happening.
Speaker 4:By the way, I should have mentioned that we are in the city where we are located has the major chromium producing company in the world. It's Eurasian Resources Group's Kaz Chromium company and of course it is, on the one hand, it is the huge contributor to the economy of the region and on the other hand, they are the polluter of the environment and thanks to them, they've recently funded we won a huge mega grant for tackling this environmental issue. In the city we have a very big transdisciplinary group which will be addressing the issues of environmental pollution for the first time. The second thing is the new technologies of working with the waste of the chromium production and the third is the sewage water. So our scholars will be working on cleaning the sewage water. It's the unprecedented amount of money that we receive and it is an unprecedented grant. And, of course, here we see the huge support not only from the government, the provider of the fund, also from the local company which is working with us, the Chromium producer. It's actually Octobia Ferro Alley's plant.
Speaker 2:Wow, the dilemmas and the tensions of climate action and sustainability. I think we can talk about that forever and I think it's also what makes us humans, with all our contradictions and the dilemmas, but still we will all together try to tackle that crisis. I have to go to my last question because the time is almost over. I can't believe it. So the last question Our network is ironically called Do Not Smile, because we need to make sustainability a subject that brings happiness into the world. So what object, place or person always make you smile?
Speaker 4:Yeah, at the end of the working day. As I see nice people now, I smile, and also my siblings, children, I think. They always bring a smile to my face whenever I feel frustrated or tired. I just scroll through their photos and the videos on my phone and of course, they just bring their joyful energy, brings a lot of happiness to me and reminding me of just basic maybe basic basic happiness of human life and the warmth of our family.
Speaker 3:Chandler. Is that not the most beautiful thing in the world? I have to say as well for everybody listening, because this isn't a video podcast. We threatened to do a video podcast for Laura because her background looks fabulous, but she's been smiling throughout the whole of this session. It's just been that energy and joyfulness has been coming through Laura hugely and it's been amazing talking to you, particularly around. You know where education is headed in a country like Kazakhstan. I don't think we right across the rest of Europe understand enough about your country, which is why it's so brilliant to have been able to talk to you today. So thank you so much.
Speaker 2:Tamla over to you.
Speaker 3:So thanks to everyone who has listened to our Good Guys podcast, brought to you by the Do Not Smile network of agencies podcast brought to you by the Do Not Smile network of agencies, and make sure you listen to future episodes, where we'll be talking to more amazing people just like Laura, about how we can work together to create a more sustainable future. So see you both soon.
Speaker 4:Bye.
Speaker 1:Bye, a podcast series on sustainability Hosted by Damla Özler and Steve Connor, brought to you by the DNS Network.
