CEP collaborates with social science and law departments through the selection of Visiting Lecturers and Eastern Scholars to serve as lecturers at universities throughout the region. Visiting Lecturers commit to teach and perform outreach activities for a minimum of one academic year. Eastern Scholars are local academics who have been to a Western institution for substantial training in their social science field. CEP assists in their efforts to work as academics in their home country.

Working closely with university officials and faculty, CEP strives to identify the most pressing needs of its partner universities and recruits Western-trained academics specifically suited to address those needs. In addition to teaching courses requested by the host department or faculty, CEP lecturers cooperate with local colleagues in designing new curricula, developing local language teaching materials, securing Western book donations, seeking research funds, and identifying opportunities for talented faculty and students to receive training outside their home countries.

CEP students are the next generation of leaders in the new democracies and market economies of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Former CEP students are now engaged as analysts and policymakers in local and national government offices, as executives in local businesses and inter­national corporations, as academics working on advanced degrees in the West, and as teachers in institutes of higher learning in their home countries.