A two-day sem­i­nar for appren­tice­ship super­vi­sors took place in ear­ly Decem­ber at the Pierre-Guil­lau­mat Cen­tre at UTC-Com­pieg­ne. The super­vi­sors came from all over France to meet with UTC tutors and work on design­ing per­son­al­ized learn­ing paths for their apprentices.

Since 2008, UTC has offered a new path­way to earn­ing its degrees through appren­tice­ship, with the same high stan­dards, while strength­en­ing its stu­dents’ pro­fes­sion­al expe­ri­ence and com­mit­ment. Indeed, appren­tice­ships allow stu­dents to acquire, in addi­tion to rec­og­nized sci­en­tif­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal skills, pro­fes­sion­al skills that are par­tic­u­lar­ly val­ued by com­pa­nies. “At UTC, it is pos­si­ble to pur­sue the same degree cur­sus through two dif­fer­ent path­ways: either as a tra­di­tion­al stu­dent or through an appren­tice­ship. The stu­dent makes the choice after two years of core cur­ricu­lum. The Mechan­i­cal Engi­neer­ing and Com­put­er Sci­ence elec­tive major pro­grammes are already avail­able through appren­tice­ships. And we will be open­ing the Urban Engi­neer­ing pro­gramme in the fall of 2027,” announced Dany-Lau­re Lav­il­lette, Direc­tor of the CFA (Appren­tice­ship Directorate).

Two well-attended seminars

UTC orga­nized two sem­i­nars on two Thurs­days, Decem­ber 4 and 11, aimed at the appren­tice­ship super­vi­sors of stu­dents who enrolled for the appren­tice­ship pro­gramme last Sep­tem­ber in Com­put­er Engi­neer­ing and Mechan­i­cal Engi­neer­ing. These two days, which brought togeth­er more than 80 appren­tice­ship super­vi­sors from var­i­ous com­pa­nies, aimed to lay the ground­work for a com­mu­ni­ty of stake­hold­ers involved in the appren­tice­ship “jour­ney” and to ensure the qual­i­ty of sup­port for appren­tices through­out their train­ing. The goal is to guide the young appren­tice toward grad­u­a­tion as a UTC engi­neer, with all that this entails in terms of acquir­ing skills and expe­ri­enc­ing the role of an engineer.

A personalized skills booklet for each apprentice

“The pro­gramme cen­tred on a morn­ing pre­sen­ta­tion in the lec­ture hall on the specifics of the appren­tice­ship at UTC-Com­pieg­ne, fea­tur­ing the appren­tice­ship supervisor’s guide and the elec­tron­ic appren­tice­ship book­let for edu­ca­tion­al track­ing. A col­lab­o­ra­tive work­shop in the after­noon ses­sion was ded­i­cat­ed to devel­op­ing the tutor­ing action plan and cre­at­ing each apprentice’s per­son­al­ized skills book­let with their appren­tice­ship super­vi­sor and UTC tutor. Here, the train­ing is tai­lored to align with the programme’s objec­tives and in-com­pa­ny activ­i­ties,” explains Dany-Lau­re Lav­il­lette. These sem­i­nars are part of an ini­tia­tive to strength­en col­lab­o­ra­tion between UTC-Com­pieg­ne, its part­ner com­pa­nies and the appren­tices, with the aim of ensur­ing con­sis­tent, high-qual­i­ty sup­port through­out their con­tracts. Appren­tice­ship super­vi­sors, teach­ing teams, appren­tices, CFA staff and UTC staff all high­light­ed the essen­tial role of appren­tice­ship super­vi­sors in pro­vid­ing guid­ance, sup­port­ing the appren­tice and trans­fer­ring knowledge.

Interaction interviews Damien Deteve, 21 years old, an apprentice in Data Analysis and Reliability Factors for Industry (acronym dfi)

Upon leav­ing high school, Damien was admit­ted to UTC-Com­pieg­ne direct­ly as an appren­tice in 2024 at Wabtec Hauts-de-France in Amiens, as a project qual­i­ty engineer.

What do you do at Wabtec?

Wabtec is a rail­way equip­ment man­u­fac­tur­er spe­cial­iz­ing in brak­ing systems—the equiv­a­lent of Valeo in the auto­mo­tive indus­try. In prac­ti­cal terms, this involves man­ag­ing every­thing relat­ed to project qual­i­ty: respect to sched­ules, require­ments, deliv­er­ables, process­es, etc. I also han­dle non-com­pli­ant parts, which means I have to analyse them, iden­ti­fy the cause and com­mu­ni­cate with the client. I’d like to move into project management.

How does this sem­i­nar help in build­ing the appren­tices’ indi­vid­u­al­ized career paths?

This sem­i­nar is the first meet­ing between the appren­tice­ship super­vi­sor and our tutor. It’s an oppor­tu­ni­ty to dis­cuss the tasks that will be car­ried out at the com­pa­ny, the skills expect­ed and how to acquire them. This is the first step toward that per­son­al­ized path with our spe­cif­ic assignments.

Why did you choose the appren­tice­ship path?

First of all, the appren­tice­ship was an oppor­tu­ni­ty for me to gain rich­er pro­fes­sion­al expe­ri­ence for the future. Fur­ther­more, I felt it would com­ple­ment the edu­ca­tion pro­vid­ed at UTC very well. In my view, it’s the best way to learn and plan one’s career path. I think it’s great that UTC is pur­su­ing this path while main­tain­ing its com­mit­ment to excel­lence. The appren­tice­ship at UTC com­ple­ments the aca­d­e­m­ic cur­ricu­lum by pro­vid­ing us with con­crete exam­ples that allow us to draw par­al­lels with what we see in class. It also allows us to see how the­o­ry is applied in the workplace.

KD