News & Events

WDI’s sustainability plan for the Marketing Education and Research Center (MERC) development project at the International Academy of Business (IAB) in Almaty, Kazakhstan was launched on March 3. A sustainable MERC can now carry out its vision of serving as a bridge between academia and the business community in Kazakhstan.

 

MERC was developed under the partnership of WDI and IAB, and funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) through the Higher Education for Development office (HED). The center was set up to build relationships with local businesses, develop faculty and promote action-based learning. It hosts guest lectures, seminars and company presentations for students and faculty, as well as for business executives. 

 

Train-the-trainers workshops delivered by WDI consultants have encouraged the IAB faculty to apply modern approaches and the use of local examples in teaching. It also markets student research projects that give their students great exposure to the real world while in school.

 

As the WDI project nears its end in June, the partners from IAB visited Michigan in late February to discuss the center’s sustainability model. Alyona Penchukova, MERC executive director, and Dr. Nataliya Sokhatskaya, chair of the Marketing department at IAB, met with professors and directors of research institutes and centers affiliated with the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan to study their operation models and applicability to MERC.

 

As a result - and with WDI’s Development Consulting Services team’s assistance - a new operation plan to bring IAB and businesses closer has been drawn up. The plan is to fully integrate MERC into IAB’s Marketing department and establish an external advisory board of businesspeople to ensure that MERC continues to effectively bridge the academic and business worlds. 

 

MERC will turn to the business community via its advisory board for more student project opportunities and speaking engagements. It will also rely on the faculty for support and constant feedback.

 

Local businesses will utilize MERC’s resources and students for knowledge and better-trained future marketers. Instructors at IAB would take advantage of MERC’s faculty development opportunities and gain access to resources on both international and local best practices for their use in the classroom.

 

Students will continue to come to MERC for active learning opportunities like student research projects, exposure to the business world through internship opportunities and career counseling tailored to marketing students’ needs. “It’s a win-win model for everyone involved,” said Ayako Ariga, projects administrator at WDI’s Development Consulting Services.

 

MERC’s relationship with the media will remain on excellent terms as MERC continues to be the source of news on innovative developments in the marketing industry. Recently, the only commercial marketing magazine in Kazakhstan featured MERC in their two issues. One article was on the WDI consultants’ workshop delivery and the other featured the international direct marketing conference hosted by MERC. 

 

The conference made big headlines because there had never been an international conference of this scale on marketing held in Kazakhstan.

 

“There has been a true partnership between IAB and WDI in making MERC the success story to be told throughout Kazakhstan,” Penchukova said.