A human point of help and resources for stu­dents, Le Phare enlight­ens and guides them in all aspects of their UTC life.

Do you need help with admin­is­tra­tive for­mal­i­ties, open­ing an account, find­ing accom­mo­da­tion or find­ing out about Eras­mus class­es? Do you have ques­tions about finan­cial aid or com­put­er loans? Yumao Shi, Auri­ane Gaba, Marie Jeze­quel, Jad Azar, Hugo Ambos, Mile­na Grox­ko and Thomas Schap­man are the first sev­en spe­cial­ly trained and moti­vat­ed Pathfind­ers at the Phare to answer as many ques­tions as pos­si­ble and to guide and sim­pli­fy the lives of new­ly matric­u­lat­ed under­grads through­out their time at UTC. Many of them are at the end of their stud­ies and are keen to help oth­ers,” points out Véronique Hédou, a teacher-research sci­en­tist in applied math­e­mat­ics and head of the Stu­dent Life Office at UTC. One of their objec­tives is to com­bat the lack of access to finan­cial aid and admin­is­tra­tive pho­bia. Stu­dents, par­tic­u­lar­ly for­eign stu­dents, some­times have dif­fi­cul­ty find­ing their way around. As a one-stop shop, Le Phare facil­i­tates ori­en­ta­tion, espe­cial­ly as some of the pathfind­ers hired by the school are Lebanese, Chi­nese and Brazil­ian and all speak Eng­lish. Diver­si­ty is tru­ly one of our strengths.

Improving access to information

To con­tin­ue the ser­vice launched at the start of the aca­d­e­m­ic year with­in the Stu­dent Life Office, new pathfind­ers will be hired in the sec­ond half of the year. Le Phare, which was pilot­ed in three Hauts-de-France estab­lish­ments this year, stems from the call for expres­sions of inter­est (CEI) launched by the Hauts-de-France Region for the peri­od 2024–2026 to pro­mote the suc­cess and pro­fes­sion­al inte­gra­tion of stu­dents in high­er edu­ca­tion estab­lish­ments in Hauts-de-France, and to which UTC respond­ed. “Le Phare also meets the ambi­tions of our Mas­ter plan for improv­ing stu­dent life and the region­al plan for High­er edu­ca­tion, Research and Inno­va­tion, to improve and struc­ture access to infor­ma­tion,” Véronique Hédou points out. Pre­sent­ed at the region­al author­i­ties’ head­quar­ters in Lille at the end of Novem­ber, the scheme is expect­ed to attract inter­est and “spread to oth­er estab­lish­ments”. As Véronique Hédou announces, for­mer stu­dents are already wel­com­ing the prin­ci­ple, which they would have liked to ben­e­fit from. An oppor­tu­ni­ty for young students.

IL