12 students. 1 professor. 15 hours on a train. On the eve of April 12th, 2023, we set out on a 15-hour train ride to Astana, the capital of Qazaqstan. In Astana, we had plans to visit Nazarbayev University, explore the city, and visit the АЛЖИР gulag camp museum and memorial before hopping on a bus to Karaganda (read about other students experience at АЛЖИР on the blog). Immediately, after getting off the train in Astana, we quickly bus over to the hostel we are staying at to drop our stuff off before going to spend the day at Nazarbayev University. On the bus we pass building after building that look brand-new and designed to be impressive, after crossing to the Left Bank of course. The side of Astana on the left bank of the river was developed mostly after the fall of the Soviet Union when the capital was moved from Almaty to Astana. The whole city was meticulously planned, and you can see the growth that has occurred within just the last 20 years, nearly every major building we passed was new or being built. And Nazarbayev University (NU) is no exception.
All of NU’s classes are taught one massive building, but the building is split up into 9 main blocks, all off-shoots of the main building. Immediately as we walked in, I was taken aback by how impressive and massive the building was (see figure 2). I kid you not when I say that it felt like some sort of resort or waterpark. There were huge pools of water, and the sun reflected off them so that the whole space was lit up beautifully.
In the picture, you can kind of see the alcoves where the separate departments reside, like the Library or the Graduate Schools. It’s all a bit of a blur as we were lead from place to place in this huge complex, but I believe we were led to a classroom in the Graduate Schools area, where we then listened to a lecture about Qazaq culture and were told about the benefits of going to a Master’s Program at NU.
We stopped for lunch and had some pizza at a mixer with NU students at staff. I, along with Alex, Grace, and our own personal NU student guide, took us down to the main hall (with the pools), and we explored the club fair-esque event that was occurring. There Grace had whale of a time promoting clubs, answering trivia questions, and participating in games in order to win the treasured prizes of stickers.
After lunch, we listened to some more lectures, one on Terror in the Soviet Union and the other on Islam in the Qazaq Steppe. Both very interesting, although I wish I could have been a little more awake to listen to them! After a full day of activities and traveling the night before, I was feeling pretty wiped. However, we persevered! We toured NU and Astana after classes. I won’t dwell on our walking tour of Astana because I want to focus on talking about Nazarbayev University, but it was enlightening to see the university in the context of the rest of the city.
Part of what struck me about NU overall was how… familiar the entire university felt. It felt like this university could have existed in any major city in the US. All except one of the professors who gave us lectures were American, and all classes taught at NU are in English. Even the students seemed similarly stressed to students at American universities when talking about finals and or certain classes. We even saw some students sleeping in a designated sleeping room in the library. When I was in high school, I visited far too many colleges and going to NU felt a little like that. Like we were trying out NU for a day and visiting all their fancy amenities. Not to say that Nazarbayev University was bad at all, but it definitely had an international feel to it that I haven’t experienced in Almaty. That is to say though, Astana in general at times felt like a city that I just sprung up from the ground, new and unused. The weather while we were in Astana was not the best (aka Saturday was extraordinarily windy and it was snowing so much our trip to Karaganda got canceled), but we encountered much fewer pedestrians than in Almaty. The buildings are much more spread out, and the city was designed for cars in mind instead of people. As a result, Nazarbayev has all the things that students need right on campus: food, friends, and activities to do, as demonstrated by the club fair. All the academic buildings are connected, and from a map I found online, I think the dormitories are also connected. The whole university, where everyone speaks English and gets an international education, is its own bubble in the middle of this newly minted city. Yet, I’m not saying this is bad! New also means a fresh slate, and as a post-Soviet country, Qazaqstan is still trying to figure out it’s place in the world. Nazarbayev University seems like the direction that Qazaqstan wants to head in: internationally focused.
