UTC also has a qual­i­ty depart­ment, or, more accu­rate­ly, a “con­tin­u­ous improve­ment” depart­ment. As the name sug­gests, the aim of this approach is to iden­ti­fy pos­si­ble improve­ments in the way the estab­lish­ment oper­ates and to deal with each one of them. The aim is to main­tain the excel­lence of its engi­neer­ing training.

Improv­ing UTC’s inter­nal oper­a­tions is the cre­do of the Steer­ing and Con­tin­u­ous Improve­ment Depart­ment (DPAC), cre­at­ed a year ago with the ambi­tion of com­bin­ing the dis­sem­i­na­tion of an active steer­ing cul­ture with that of con­tin­u­ous improve­ment with­in all UTC depart­ments. The team lead­ing this ini­tia­tive, which is above all intend­ed to be use­ful, par­tic­i­pa­tive and pro­gres­sive, is involved in a wide range of actions. “The pro­gram is indeed vast. It requires each enti­ty to know pre­cise­ly to which of the estab­lish­men­t’s mis­sions it con­tributes, with which oth­er enti­ties it shares its objec­tives, and how they are going to mea­sure it togeth­er. The DPAC is work­ing there­fore not only on the def­i­n­i­tion of mis­sions and roles, but also on the process­es and pro­ce­dures that con­tribute to these mis­sions, as well as on the def­i­n­i­tion of mea­sure­ment indi­ca­tors and the pro­duc­tion of their data”, explains Sabine Braule, Direc­tor of Steer­ing and Con­tin­u­ous Improve­ment, whose role it is to coor­di­nate the whole process with a qual­i­ty project man­ag­er, two man­age­ment con­trollers and a man­ag­er of the deci­sion-mak­ing infor­ma­tion sys­tem. All are com­mit­ted to devel­op­ing a cul­ture of con­tin­u­ous improve­ment based on par­tic­i­pa­tion, infor­ma­tion and training.

Several projects launched over the past year

“For exam­ple, we worked on the engi­neer­ing school rank­ings and the inter­na­tion­al rank­ings of high­er edu­ca­tion and research estab­lish­ments, which did not match our ambi­tions. We looked at the indi­ca­tors used to define our posi­tion­ing in rela­tion to oth­ers and how we could improve them. This is how we came up with a new ‘sig­na­ture char­ter’ for our sci­en­tif­ic pub­li­ca­tions’, so that all pub­li­ca­tions ema­nat­ing from the UTC would be effec­tive­ly attached to it, which is not cur­rent­ly the case”, illus­trates Sabine Braule, who also reviewed the declared scope of UTC resources used for research, tak­ing into account fund­ing pro­vid­ed by exter­nal enti­ties. For the mul­ti­ple rank­ings of engi­neer­ing schools, the qual­i­ty depart­ment has also dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed the data and their cir­cuits. “We are in the process of mod­i­fy­ing data cir­cuits, such as trans­fer scripts and data entry pro­ce­dures, to improve the qual­i­ty of data feed­back while min­i­miz­ing the effort required of depart­ments. At the same time, this team is work­ing on the “uni­vers­es” in which the data is stored, so that it can be more eas­i­ly cross-ref­er­enced and enti­ties can draw up reports and analy­ses, with­out releas­ing and con­sum­ing too much energy.

A department also involved in the master plan to improve student life

Anoth­er action is the revi­sion of UTC’s activ­i­ty map­ping. “We are work­ing with the depart­ments to for­mal­ize all our activ­i­ties and major tasks. The idea is to share this map­ping with every­one, to define who does what and how we do it. And, above all, we’ll be forc­ing our­selves to review all our oper­a­tions annu­al­ly, start­ing in the first half of 2025; some activ­i­ties will already be part of this review exer­cise. The ulti­mate aim is to mea­sure the effects of our actions col­lec­tive­ly and to reflect on their rel­e­vance,” adds Sabine Braule. The DPAC has thus helped to for­mu­late the “expect­ed effects” of the Mas­ter plan’s ambi­tions to improve stu­dent life, by defin­ing a num­ber of indi­ca­tors that will be used to ver­i­fy that the Action plan is pro­duc­ing its effects. “For exam­ple, with regard to the ambi­tion “to pro­mote equal­i­ty, respect and inclu­sive­ness in all aspects of stu­dent life”, we are going to mea­sure changes in the sat­is­fac­tion rate of stu­dents con­cern­ing their per­son­al ful­fil­ment dur­ing their stud­ies at UTC. To this end, a sat­is­fac­tion sur­vey has been pre­pared and will be dis­trib­uted reg­u­lar­ly on cam­pus. But we will also mea­sure the evo­lu­tion of the means that the estab­lish­ment con­tributes to this ambi­tion: actions to raise aware­ness of the fight against sex­ist or gen­der-based vio­lence (SGBV) and dis­crim­i­na­tion, as well as those linked to dis­abil­i­ty aware­ness. We’ll be mea­sur­ing on a reg­u­lar basis whether what we’ve imple­ment­ed under this Mas­ter plan is indeed relevant.”

KD