On May 18, 2026, Al-Farabi Kazakh National University successfully hosted an Institutional Monitoring Visit by Maria-Sol Domínguez Parrado, Project Officer at the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). This comprehensive evaluation served as a strategic platform to review the implementation and institutional impact of European Union cooperation initiatives within the Capacity-Building in Higher Education (CBHE) framework. A central element of the official working session was the presentation of detailed monitoring reports on projects al-Farabi KazNU. Crucially, a highly detailed progress and monitoring report for the ongoing ERASMUS-EDU-2023-CBHE project LESLIE (Land Management, Environment and Solid Waste: Inside Education and Business in Central Asia, Project Number: 101129032) was jointly prepared and presented by Zhanar Shortanbayeva, the National Coordinator of the project in Kazakhstan, alongside key project staff member Guldana Minzhanova.
The presentation provided a thorough overview of the LESLIE project’s structure, current progress, and key results. As a 36-month initiative (running from January 1, 2024, to December 31, 2026), LESLIE unites a powerful international consortium of 14 partners across three EU nations (Spain, Italy, Cyprus) and two Central Asian countries (Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan), with Javier Rodrigo Ilarri serving as the European General Coordinator. The report detailed the successful execution of the project’s foundational Work Packages, specifically highlighting the institutional integration within WP1 (Project Management and Quality Assurance), WP2 (SLM International Hub), and WP3 (Future Learning Incubator).
The university team demonstrated that critical milestones have been met in compliance with the project’s strict Quality Assurance Plan, including the completion of key deliverables such as the SLM Hub Questionnaire (Deliverable 2.1), the list of potential SLM members (Deliverable 2.2), comprehensive questionnaire reports, and the structural frameworks for the Future Learning Incubator using a multidisciplinary STEHEAM approach. The report placed special emphasis on the current results of WP4 (SLM Micro-credentials), which represents the core academic output of the initiative.
The international team is currently engaged in intensive, collaborative teamwork to develop and finalize a comprehensive catalogue of eight specialized Micro-credentials totaling 33 ECTS credits. These flexible, market-oriented courses are specifically designed to update BSc and MSc curricula across Central Asian universities while meeting the strict international standards of regulators and industries. The curriculum structure encompasses vital regional topics, including Circular Economy for Land and Waste Management (led by Koksu University), Climate Change for Sustainable Land Management (led by Bukhara State University), Solid Waste Management and Recycling (led by the Tashkent Institute of Irrigation and Agricultural Mechanization Engineers), and Water Management for Sustainable Land Management, which is directly led by Al-Farabi Kazakh National University.
This joint academic development is tightly integrated with the creation of digital educational tools and an Online SLM Repository Toolbox (WP5) to facilitate online learning and wide-scale dissemination (WP6). The EACEA monitoring officer highly commended the synergy between the completed EduEnvi project and the active implementation of the LESLIE project, praising the high level of stakeholder engagement achieved through successful regional workshops and dissemination newsletters. Sincere gratitude is extended to Maria-Sol Domínguez Parrado for her invaluable insights and unwavering support of these academic endeavors. Special recognition is given to the European General Coordinator, Javier Rodrigo Ilarri, for his exceptional leadership of the international consortium, and to Laura Paluanova for her flawless coordination of the Erasmus+ program in Kazakhstan. The success of this monitoring visit underscores the university’s alignment with international standards.
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Prof. Javier Rodrigo-Ilarri also participated as a panellist in the session “Opportunities for Cooperation: Green and Digital Transition”. This panel addressed emerging areas of collaboration linked to sustainability, environmental challenges, digital transformation, and the role of universities in supporting the green transition. These themes are closely aligned with the broader objectives of the LESLIE project, particularly in relation to capacity building, institutional modernisation, and the development of skills for sustainable and innovative higher education.
Closed municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills are hotspots of anthropogenic disturbance and can remain environmentally unstable for decades, especially in semi-arid steppe/forest-steppe climates where water limitation, substrate heterogeneity, and ongoing informal dumping constrain ecological recovery. This work provides a first detailed baseline of spontaneous vegetation on a closed MSW landfill near 
Overall, the study provides a practical template for monitoring, zoning, and species selection on closed or partially closed landfills in semi-arid steppe regions, supporting the broader LESLIE objective of strengthening applied environmental capacities and sustainable land management approaches.
The 
The authors explicitly acknowledge the contribution of the Erasmus+ CBHE project LESLIE (ERASMUS-EDU-2023-CBHE No. 101129032) in disseminating the research results, underlining the project’s role in amplifying high-impact scientific outputs and their uptake by stakeholders. The article is published open access under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).
The meeting gathered EU partners—Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) as project coordinator, University of Cassino and Southern Lazio (UNICAS), and University of Cyprus (UCY)—together with Kazakh partners (KazNU as national coordinator, Sh. Ualikhanov Kokshetau University (KOKSU), Akhmet Yassawi University (AYU), CAREC, and the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of Kazakhstan) and Uzbek partners (Fergana Polytechnic Institute (FPI) as national coordinator, TIIAME-NRU, BINRM–TIIAME-NRU, Bukhara State University (BSU), International Agricultural University (IAU), and the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Innovations of the Republic of Uzbekistan).
A key technical session followed on micro-qualifications in Kazakhstan, focusing on definitions, conceptual approaches, programme design, and implementation experience, and enabling an open discussion on current challenges for universities when deploying micro-credentials. The afternoon concentrated on project implementation and deliverables.
The meeting closed with conclusions and next steps (UPV), followed by a guided KazNU campus tour, supporting networking and a shared understanding of the host university environment.
Researchers from the Department of Meteorology and Hydrology, Faculty of Geography and Environmental Sciences, Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, Almaty, Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV), and other Kazakh institutions have published this joint research study which presents the first centimeter-scale, high-resolution bathymetric model of Lake Markakol (eastern Kazakhstan), generated using advanced hydroacoustic and geospatial techniques.
The primary objective was to reassess key morphometric parameters—surface area, depth, volume, and shoreline configuration—more than six decades after the only existing survey from 1962. High-density depth data were acquired with a Lowrance HDS-12 Live echo sounder, achieving vertical precision of ±0.17 m, and processed using ReefMaster and ArcGIS to produce a three-dimensional, hydrologically correct model of the lake basin. Compared with archival data, results show that while the surface area (455.365 ± 0.005 km 2 ), length (38.304 ± 0.002 km), and width (19.138 ± 0.002 km) have remained stable, the maximum depth is lower (24.14 ± 0.17 m vs. 27 m), and the total water volume is slightly higher (6.667 ± 0.025 km 3 vs. 6.37 km 3 ). These differences highlight both the limitations of historical lead-line surveys and the enhanced accuracy of modern hydroacoustic and GIS-based methods.
The workflow developed here is transferable to other remote alpine lakes, providing an invaluable baseline for limnological research, ecological assessment, hydrodynamic modeling, and long-term water resource management strategies in data-scarce mountain regions.