During the 1995-96 academic year, CEP will establish new pilot programs in Belarus and Kazakhstan. Several institutions in both countries expressed interest in cooperation with CEP last fall and, soon after, trips were made to assess university needs and interests with local representatives. Interested lecturers were recruited and preparations have since been made for their arrival in the fall.

The European Humanitarian University (EHU) in Minsk will be hosting a lecturer in history and one in economics. The first private higher education institution in Minsk, EHU offers its students specializations in the social sciences and humanities. Although it is still young and relatively-small, it has attracted attention by offering an alternative to the standard curriculum available at Belarus State University. CEP lecturers will work alongside other Western faculty to help train, as EHU's Vice-Rector, Vladimir Dounaev, comments, "the new intellectual, political, and economic elite in Belarus."

In Almaty, CEP will work with the Kazakhstan Institute of Management, Economics, and Strategic Research (KIMEP), a graduate training center. Relying on a faculty that is exclusively Western-trained and sponsored, KIMEP has a mandate from the President of Kazakhstan to assist in the training of the next generation of economists, business leaders, and civil servants.

While CEP does not normally place lecturers at institutions with such a predominate Western presence, working with KIMEP will provide CEP with an opportunity to develop public administration curricula which responds effectively to the specific needs of Kazakhstan. The three CEP lecturers will, in particular, provide the core of the program in public administration and bolster the Master's in Economics program which is headed by Dr. Stephen Baba, a former CEP lecturer in Ukraine. Almaty will represent CEP's easternmost site and its first entry into Central Asia.