UTC is launch­ing its own in-house CFA for the com­ing aca­d­e­m­ic year year. The aim is to meet the demand from com­pa­nies and to inten­si­fy appren­tice­ship train­ing. This already involves dou­bling the num­ber of stu­dents in com­put­er and mechan­i­cal engineering.

The num­ber of appren­tice trainee stu­dents in com­put­er sci­ences and mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing through appren­tice schemes has increased from 24 to 48 stu­dents. These larg­er class­es respond to a real inter­est in the appren­tice­ship engi­neer­ing degree. “We also intend to pro­pose to all the cours­es at UTC which wish to be accom­pa­nied towards train­ing via appren­tice­ship to rely on this in-house CFA. Just like what has been done by the team of the Mas­ter’s degree in Health Engi­neer­ing and its two cours­es: pro­posed by appren­tice­ship since the begin­ning of the aca­d­e­m­ic year 2021”, reveals Dany-Lau­re Lav­il­lette, Direc­tor of the UTC-CFA in charge of the train­ing and the cor­po­rate pole at UTC. 

“In com­put­er sci­ence, two cours­es are already on offer. The first is in soft­ware engi­neer­ing and the sec­ond in infra­struc­ture and inter­ac­tion and knowl­edge engineering. 

In mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing, the appren­tice can choose between the design or indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion cours­es. The CFA will be the base for this increase in num­bers, with almost 250 appren­tices spread over the three years of train­ing from the start of the next school year,” con­tin­ues Dany-Lau­re Lavillette. 

This will opti­mise the admin­is­tra­tive and finan­cial organ­i­sa­tion of this increas­ing­ly pop­u­lar form of edu­ca­tion. The CFA will be oper­a­tional as of May. It is a depart­ment of the UTC in its own right. 

A diploma of equal value 

The con­tent, the organ­i­sa­tion and the struc­ture of the teach­ing designed at UTC aim at pro­vid­ing the engi­neer­ing stu­dents, in addi­tion to the sci­en­tif­ic and tech­ni­cal com­pe­tences, pro­fes­sion­al skills par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant for the com­pa­nies. An appren­tice­ship is part of this con­ti­nu­ity. “For a long time now, we have embod­ied this choice to give our appren­tice­ship diplo­mas the same require­ments, the same ped­a­gog­i­cal objec­tives and the same com­pe­tences as those under stu­dent sta­tus. Our recruit­ment cri­te­ria are the same. The future appren­tices must also have excel­lent records”, assures Eti­enne Arnoult, Dean of Train­ing and Ped­a­gogy at UTC. 

Thus, the diplo­ma obtained by the appren­tice at the end of the train­ing is the same for all the stu­dents of UTC. “We were already pio­neers in this field when we opened these mechan­i­cal and com­put­er sci­ence cours­es to appren­tice­ship in the 2000s,” he adds. “More­over, com­pa­nies like the sand­wich sys­tem very much. The CFA is a way of approach­ing these com­pa­nies close up, inas­much as they are look­ing for young peo­ple trained in their own DNA, so to speak. I am also a lec­tur­er in mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing and I observe that appren­tices devel­op a quick­er and more refined under­stand­ing of the com­pa­ny and its chal­lenges. They are bet­ter able to pre­dict what it will be like tomorrow”

PORTRAITS !

Bruno Da Sil­va, Asso­ciate Direc­tor of Leanovia — Sys­tem Archi­tec­ture and Per­for­mance Consultant 

“I have been an appren­tice mas­ter for sev­er­al years now. I recruit appren­tices from UTC, from which I myself grad­u­at­ed. I want­ed to give back what I received as an appren­tice. Each year, we accom­pa­ny sev­er­al of them and we fol­low them whether in the office or in the cus­tomer’s office. All of them are sub­se­quent­ly recruit­ed on per­ma­nent con­tracts. I am very sat­is­fied with them. In our sec­tor of activ­i­ty, the per­for­mance part of the Sys­tem Archi­tec­ture is not some­thing that can be learned at school. So we need time to train our employ­ees in these very spe­cif­ic aspects over two to three years. In my opin­ion, an appren­tice­ship is the ide­al for­mu­la. The appren­tice engi­neers are effi­cient, they have good reflex­es and they have this per­spec­tive on engi­neer­ing schools which gives them a lot of matu­ri­ty. This is the best way to meet the needs of our demand­ing clients in the var­i­ous sec­tors of bank­ing, insur­ance, gov­ern­ment ser­vices and e‑commerce”.

Meh­di Serairi, lec­tur­er-research sci­en­tist — head of Com­put­er Sci­ence Engineering 

“I have been teach­ing appren­tices at UTC for eight years now. The rhythm of the sand­wich cours­es is an essen­tial char­ac­ter­is­tic in this teach­ing which must be tak­en into account. This is organ­ised by the sequence of sequences of the order of six weeks. The first sequence is car­ried out at UTC then the stu­dents go to the com­pa­ny before com­ing back to UTC and so on. When they come back from the com­pa­ny sequence, they gen­er­al­ly wish to stay with field cas­es in order to bet­ter appre­hend the sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge taught. The teach­ing meth­ods imple­ment­ed by the teach­ers take into account this par­tic­u­lar­i­ty. Induc­tive teach­ing meth­ods are thus favoured. Let us recall that at UTC we train gen­er­al­ist com­put­er engi­neers, they are thus com­pe­tent to inter­vene in var­i­ous fields of dig­i­tal engi­neer­ing such as arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, data sci­ence, net­works, cyber­se­cu­ri­ty, robot­ics, opti­miza­tion. The work-study pro­gramme with the part­ner­ship of a com­pa­ny allows stu­dents to be trained in a spe­cif­ic com­put­er sci­ence pro­fes­sion in addi­tion to their engi­neer­ing degree.” 

Chris­tine Suard, Group Cam­pus Man­ag­er at Safran Group 

“The Safran Group sup­ports appren­tice­ships at all lev­els. For sev­er­al years, sand­wich course pro­grammes have been an impor­tant means of wel­com­ing young peo­ple. As for UTC appren­tices, we main­ly favour young peo­ple from mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing and com­put­er sci­ence cours­es. Some of the appren­tices con­tin­ue their stud­ies, oth­ers are hired at the end of their course or return after a few years of expe­ri­ence. At Safran, we par­tic­u­lar­ly appre­ci­ate the fact that we can train a young per­son over a three-year peri­od, with a pres­ence through­out the aca­d­e­m­ic year. Every year, we wel­come more than 2 300 sand­wich course stu­dents at the var­i­ous Safran sites in France. It’s an excel­lent train­ing course in the field!”