Isabelle Cail­leau is a lec­tur­er-cum-research sci­en­tist in Infor­ma­tion and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Sci­ences in UTC’s TSH depart­ment; she teach­es and con­ducts research in dig­i­tal lit­er­a­cy. She has been a mem­ber of the Aca­d­e­m­ic Board since 2021 and, since June 2023, is Direc­tor of Eco­log­i­cal Tran­si­tion and Soci­etal Engage­ment (TE&ES).

For sev­er­al years now, UTC has been evolv­ing in order to meet soci­etal chal­lenges, includ­ing those of eco­log­i­cal tran­si­tion. ‘In 2022, a con­sul­ta­tion was launched. Work­ing groups on dif­fer­ent themes were set up to define the actions to be tak­en. After her appoint­ment as head of the uni­ver­si­ty, Prof. Claire Rossi want­ed to extend this approach by cre­at­ing a func­tion­al depart­ment ded­i­cat­ed to TE&ES. My main moti­va­tion for apply­ing was to con­tribute to UTC’s TE&ES pol­i­cy by involv­ing the whole com­mu­ni­ty,’ she explains.

It is an emi­nent­ly cross-dis­ci­pli­nary mis­sion which “involves coor­di­nat­ing every­thing to do with TE&ES, both inter­nal­ly, by mobil­is­ing all of UTC’s enti­ties on the sub­ject, and exter­nal­ly with part­ners such as the UT group or the Sor­bonne Uni­ver­si­ty Alliance, for exam­ple. It is also cross­dis­ci­pli­nary, cov­er­ing gov­er­nance, teach­ing and train­ing, research and inno­va­tion, cam­pus life and social pol­i­cy’, she adds.

It’s an ambi­tious mis­sion that Isabelle Cail­leau and oth­ers at UTC have tak­en on. ‘I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to recruit a per­ma­nent project man­ag­er. In addi­tion, three col­leagues have been appoint­ed for four years to work on the most demand­ing sub­jects: edu­ca­tion, research-inno­va­tion and UTC’s inter­ac­tion with Soci­ety. We have also cho­sen to have rep­re­sen­ta­tives from all the enti­ties, peo­ple cho­sen by the func­tion­al direc­tors or the direc­tors of sup­port ser­vices, for exam­ple, so that they can par­tic­i­pate in the TE&ES approach. For my part, I start­ed with an immer­sion phase to find out more about what is being done inter­nal­ly, and also to estab­lish the exter­nal net­work’, she assures us.

Among the projects cur­rent­ly under­way? ‘Since Feb­ru­ary 2024, we have launched a major project, the Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment and Envi­ron­men­tal and Social Respon­si­bil­i­ty (SD&ESR) mas­ter plan, the aim of which is to struc­ture and expand UTC’s TEES approach for the peri­od 2024–2028. In fact, since June 2023, the Min­istry has pro­vid­ed all high­er edu­ca­tion estab­lish­ments with a set of spec­i­fi­ca­tions in the hope that they will adopt an SD&RSE mas­ter plan. Near­ly 120 peo­ple are involved in the con­struc­tion of this mas­ter plan around eleven themes, includ­ing respon­si­ble pur­chas­ing, the institution’s inter­ac­tions with Soci­ety, teach­ing and train­ing, research-inno­va­tion, reduc­ing the envi­ron­men­tal foot­print, sus­tain­able mobil­i­ty, etc.,’ con­cludes Isabelle Cailleau.

MSD