Universities

About HEI

Suleyman Demirel University (SDU) is one of the first private higher education institutions in Kazakhstan. It is situated in the mountainous town of Kaskelen, 20km from Almaty city center. The University was founded in 1996 and opened by the former president of the country Nursultan Nazarbayev and the ninth president of Turkiye Suleyman Demirel. SDU started work from a small building in Almaty, then moving to Kaskelen, where 40,000 sq.m modern campus and 20,000 sq.m dormitory were founded meeting all modern requirements. Today SDU educates over 7,000 students and has 271 teaching staff. There are four faculties at the university: – Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences; – Faculty of Law and Social Sciences; – Faculty of Pedagogy and Humanities; – Business School and Multidisciplinary Education Center. As one of the first universities with English as a meduim of instruction, the university currently has 55 educational programs: 28 undergraduate , 20 Master’s and 7 Doctoral programs. SDU operates a trilingual education system, 62% of the educational programs taught in English, 20% in Kazakh, and 18% are available in English, Kazakh or Russian. Training is conducted according to European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS)- European system of credit accumulation and transfer. The teaching staff are researchers and professionals of their field, who graduated from prestigious institutions of the country and abroad. The total number of teaching staff is 271, of which 20% are candidates of science, 36% PhD. In 2020, 59 researchers actively worked on the scientific research projects, publishing scientific papers in journals indexed in international databases: 33 in Scopus and 19 in Web of Science. In addition, the scientific department of the university quarterly publishes four scientific journals. The university has 1 research institute, 7 research centers and 4 operating scientific laboratories. The projects are implemented via targeted and grant funding in the fields of Kazakh language and history of Kazakhstan, mathematics, IT, data. This year, the University gained 350th place in the QS EECA (Emerging Europe and Central Asia) ranking. The university is an active participant of international Impact Rankings and aims to achieve high performance. As for student and alumni connection, over 2,000 users are now registered to special SDUConnect app used by alumni, for news, opinion exchange, professional development, education, communication, and careers. Currently, 185 foreign students from China, Russia, Mongolia, as well as from the countries of Central Asia and Africa are studying at the university. Agreements of cooperation with 56 universities in 26 countries are active, and joint projects on academic mobility and experience exchange are currently being implemented as a result. SDU is also working on ERASMUS projects in the field of pedagogy and engineering.