HIGHER EDUCATION PROGRAM

Goal: The Mongolian Higher Education Support Program aims to improve the quality of teaching of social sciences at the Mongolian universities through assistance for the retraining of young professors and support for the curriculum development initiatives which provides academic writing and critical thinking skills of the students.

General introduction
MFOS focused on the continuing education of young professors and support of exchange of information and ideas in the professional community. For the last four years more than 400 young faculty of social sciences updated their knowledge in the fields and learnt new educational strategies through participation in the Network training and research grant projects such as CEU- Curriculum development, CEU-Summer University, CEU-Mobility lecturer, HESP Central Asia Research Initiatives, HESP Regional Summer Courses, CEP programs.

Main achievement of the Higher Education Support Program within the period of January to April, 2003 is the finalizing the preparatory phase of the Social science curriculum reform project at National University of Mongolia to prepare the Sociology and Political science departments for developing a comprehensive curricula on political science and sociology, which can serve as model for other similar departments.

Model Curriculum Development: MNU Social Science Faculty Development project
Higher education support activities are playing crucial role in the reforming of teaching of social sciences. Core project in this are is the Social Science Faculty Development Project at the National University of Mongolia. Main expected outcome of the project is the development of the Model Social science curriculum in political sciences and sociology as a sample curriculum with appropriate learning materials, and training of the professors who will teach newly developed courses. The evaluation of the first preparatory stage of the project was done by Professor Andrei Dectyarov, Moscow State Institute of International Relations. He commented that the Social Science Curriculum Project should focus strictly on social science curriculum reform and gives some highly valuable insights on how this could be done. According to his view, this is to be accomplished through focusing on three areas: (i) developing new course descriptions and syllabi; (ii) developing textbooks and/or readers for new courses, (iii) improving the teaching methodology. The project activities will be revised before the continuation of the project. Higher Education Network programs such as Summer Schools, CEU Curriculum Resource Center continue to provide training opportunities abroad for Mongolian social science and humanity professors.

Achievements:
During the pilot phase of the project, key steps towards preparing faculty members at Political science and Sociology departments of National University of Mongolia for major curriculum reform are taken. The two faculties of the NUM have been working on the curriculum and sub-fields development. Five faculty seminars on curriculum development and cultivating students' analytical skills for Sociology faculty members are conducted. A group of 4 junior faculty members were trained at the Central European University's Curriculum Resource Center for course development training before to assist in transforming and improving their political science and sociology curricula to meet international standards. Another main activity of the project is that 2 of the faculty members are receiving training by the CEP fellows by acting as their interpreters and observing their teaching methods in their classes. In order to improve foreign language skills of students and junior professors to encourage more dynamic engagement with other scholars in different countries, the project is providing with a team of native and non-native English teachers. 4 textbooks on Political Science and Sociology are being translated for the curriculum development of the faculties.
In order to build an academic network between Siberian/East Russian and Mongolian professors, and to foster a steady transfer of knowledge and technique from Western trained scholars to Mongolian junior faculty at a low cost, four Siberian CEP lecturers visited NUM and delivered lectures.
In order to promote diverse scholarship on all aspects of Mongolian society and to advance knowledge and understanding of it across disciplines through theoretical and empirical research and discussions, a social science journal was established. An international and a national advisory editorial board have been set up and the first call of papers is ready to be advertised through newspapers and through its own webpage: http://www.mongolianjournal.org
Several guest lecture series for the faculties and the students of NUM, with the aim of providing opportunities to interact with different kinds of leaders who are shaping the social, cultural, political, and economic development of Mongolia and also prominent international organizations, and heads of multi-national corporations in Mongolia were conducted.
Regarding the management of the project, the first 7 months was managed by the CEP fellow, but the last 5 months was managed by the Social Science Faculty of the NUM.