Is engi­neer­ing train­ing ready to meet the chal­lenges of cli­mate change? It’s a ques­tion that a dozen stu­dents from the SI01 course worked on for a semes­ter, under the guid­ance of Clement Mabi, lec­tur­er at UTC. The con­clu­sion of their work takes the form of a debate, broad­cast live on the UTC’s social networks.

Organ­is­ing a debate and lead­ing to face the ques­tion of the evo­lu­tion of their train­ing in a con­text of adap­ta­tion to cli­mate issues is the project that a dozen stu­dents are work­ing on as part of their SI01 course. Imag­in­ing the future in order to meet the chal­lenges while inte­grat­ing soci­etal and inno­v­a­tive tech­no­log­i­cal changes rais­es the ques­tion of the rel­e­vance of uni­ver­si­ty cur­ric­u­la. «Some of our sci­en­tif­ic cours­es are entire­ly rel­e­vant, but when it comes to tech­nol­o­gy, it’s all about design­ing future sys­tems and their organ­i­sa­tion,» says Paul Taupin, one of a dozen stu­dents involved in set­ting up a web-debate on this issue. Guests will include Anne Le Goff, lec­tur­er at UTC and Sophie Havreng, lec­tur­er and edi­tor at the Shift Project and head of the socio-econ­o­my and evo­lu­tion of the T3P sec­tor at the French Min­istry for Eco­log­i­cal Tran­si­tion. «We are still look­ing to the past and its obso­les­cence,» adds Paul Taupin. But stu­dents from the UTC who are mem­bers of ‘Com­pieg­ne en tran­si­tion’ are inter­est­ed in the sub­ject in order to pro­pose solu­tions.» For the stu­dent, the project to train engi­neers for the 21st Cen­tu­ry, led by the Shift Project team and the INSA Group (Insti­tute of Applied Sci­ences), is a good example. 

What are the blind spots in engi­neer­ing train­ing? How can engi­neers help opti­mise exist­ing sys­tems to reduce their car­bon foot­print while main­tain­ing their effi­cien­cy? What are the main chal­lenges that train­ing pro­grammes need to over­come in order to inte­grate sus­tain­abil­i­ty as a core com­po­nent of engi­neer­ing? What are the most envi­ron­ment­friend­ly indus­tri­al prac­tices? Is the dis­avow­al of cur­rent engi­neer­ing train­ing nec­es­sary for inno­va­tion? These are just some of the ques­tions to be addressed in a debate that aims to be «fruit­ful and con­struc­tive as part of a more in-depth approach and reflec­tion on our train­ing», empha­sis­es Paul Taupin. We hope to con­firm our point of view on its nec­es­sary evo­lu­tion. Engi­neer­ing needs to find solu­tions that deal with the chal­lenges of com­pro­mise and reduc­tion. n IL This debate will be broad­cast “live” on UTC’s social net­works, Decem­ber 12 at 13h00 (also acces­si­ble via replay later.

Clement Mabi, a lec­tur­er at UTC and a spe­cial­ist in issues such as demo­c­ra­t­ic exper­i­men­ta­tion, Open Gov, cit­i­zen par­tic­i­pa­tion, dig­i­tal cul­ture, envi­ron­men­tal dia­logue and con­tro­ver­sy analy­sis, ≪ini­ti­ates and trains peo­ple to think about the social pos­ture of the engi­neer≫, he says. ≪Sen­si­tive to eco­log­i­cal upheavals, the sys­temic vision of things and the sci­ence of inno­va­tion, I remain con­vinced that a Soci­ety in tran­si­tion needs a bot­tom-up cir­cu­lar econ­o­my and open gov­er­nance. I believe in active ecol­o­gy in engi­neer­ing schools. The stu­dents’ work is based on three chal­lenges: the­o­ret­i­cal input, meet­ings with guests and putting the con­cepts devel­oped into prac­tice. To defend their ideas, their matu­ri­ty, their open­ness and their involve­ment, debate is a excel­lent complement.≫