How to train highly qualified specialists for Kazakhstan?

This is the task that Samat Panov, a teacher at KAZGUU Higher School of Economics and KAZGUU Business School, has set for himself. Samat is the director and a cofounder of the educational company Marketing Partners LTD, Master of Business Administration, and Edmund S. Muskie fellow. Throughout his 8-year tenure at KAZGUU, Samat Tulegenovich has been sharing his experience of success, and teaching his students to set clear goals, not to be afraid of making mistakes, and to learn valuable lessons from them.

– Samat Tulegenovich, where have you studied and worked?

– I got my first degree in Finance and Credit at the Department of Economics of Karaganda State University. I graduated with honours and stayed there to teach. My following work experience is mostly connected with finance and marketing. In the past 20 years I have worked at KarSU, Temirbank JSC, Astana Finance JSC, National Business magazine, Astana Finance JSC and Tsesna Capital JSC brokerage companies. In 2007 I graduated with honours from the Golden Gate University, San Francisco, USA, under the Edmund S. Muskie Fellowship programme sponsored by the US Department of State. I got my MBA there. My last corporate position was with Tsesna Capital JSC, as a managing director and member of the board. Since 2012 I have been the director of Marketing Partners LTD.

– Which discipline are you teaching at KAZGUU at the moment?

– I started teaching at KAZGUU Business School’s MBA programme in 2009. Since 2015, I have also been teaching at the Higher School of Economics. In this time, I have taught such disciplines as ‘Foundations of Management’, ‘Foundations of Marketing’, ‘Public Speaking’, ‘Advertising Strategy and Promotion’, and ‘Leadership’. At the moment, I am teaching two disciplines: ‘Foundations of Management’ and ‘International Marketing’.

– What affected your decision to combine your main job with teaching at HSE and the Business School?

– I started my career as a teacher at KarSU. Ten years of working at different companies and studying in the US made me convinced that I should teach at a university. I want the young generation to be more competitive, to have the right set of values, to achieve great things. I believe that I can share my knowledge, experience, and my vision with the young people.

– What principles guide you in your teaching?

– When teaching, I use various methods: traditional lectures, discussions, business case analysis, team work, and presentations. The basic idea is that the students should do more independent work, making their own decisions and acting on them. In my view, this is the most effective way to teach. Recently, I have started to end all my lessons with a Q&A session. Students write their questions of pieces of paper, and then take turns to answer them.

In my teaching, I am guided by such principles as openness, result-orientation, punctuality, and integrity. My goal as a teacher is to motivate people to think, make decisions, see future prospects, learn and constantly develop themselves. I always try to help my students to develop time management skills, communication skills, decision making skills, presentation skills, team working skills, and leadership skills. The assignments that I give my students and my system of assessment are aimed at identifying, developing, and mastering these skills. I must encourage the students to develop, learn, make mistakes and draw lessons from them. I also want my students to be honest and highly competent professionals. This is the type of specialists that we lack today.