Next semes­ter, a new CC will open at UTC: IS03 — Low-tech­ni­ci­sa­tion and dig­i­tal prac­tice. This CC was cre­at­ed in the con­text of the label ‘Sus­tain­able Engi­neer­ing’ at UTC. The objec­tive is to pro­vide stu­dents with tools on cur­rent envi­ron­men­tal and social issues in order to have input keys to bet­ter under­stand the eco­log­i­cal sit­u­a­tion and to be able to take action in their profession.

“It is not enough to green wash our com­mon ways of think­ing about and doing things to solve the major prob­lems of hab­it­abil­i­ty that we face right now. This is one of the moti­va­tions of Stéphane Crozat, qual­i­fied engi­neer and PhD in com­put­er sci­ence and sev­er­al lec­tur­er-researcher sci­en­tists from UTC involved in the cre­ation of the CC IS03:  Low-tech­ni­ci­sa­tion and dig­i­tal prac­tice. Low-tech­ni­ci­sa­tion has been intro­duced as one of the three struc­tur­ing axes of the label Sus­tain­able Engi­neer­ing at the UTC. “Fur­ther­more, the Ademe Agency has pub­lished a doc­u­ment enti­tled “Tran­si­tions 2050” which pro­pos­es four sce­nar­ios for France’s tran­si­tion poli­cies. And we have to admit that almost all of our cours­es are ori­ent­ed towards the fourth sce­nario, known as ‘the repair gamble’. 

Hence the idea to pro­pose some­thing such that future engi­neers could ori­ent them­selves towards the oth­er 3 sce­nar­ios, and in par­tic­u­lar the first one, “The Fru­gal Gen­er­a­tion”. With oth­er col­leagues from sev­er­al uni­ver­si­ty depart­ments, with stu­dents and with work­ing engi­neers, we met reg­u­lar­ly to see what edu­ca­tion­al con­tent we could struc­ture for the stu­dents,” explains Stéphane Crozat. 

This lec­tur­er-cum-research sci­en­tist who has taught at UTC since 2002 col­lab­o­rat­ed on this project with sev­er­al peo­ple, includ­ing Pierre La Roc­ca, a stu­dent at the time, a young qual­i­fied engi­neer today, Syl­vain Spinel­li, tech­ni­cal direc­tor of the Kelis com­pa­ny in Thourotte and the lec­tur­ers Hugues Choplin, Ben­jamin Lussier, Guil­laume Carni­no and Matthieu Bricogne. They quick­ly exper­i­ment­ed a short for­mat as part of the inter-semes­ter teach­ing activ­i­ties. “The par­tic­i­pa­tion of IT in the eco­log­i­cal foot­print of humans (CO₂, rare earths, bio­di­ver­si­ty, water, etc.) is now proven valid, even if the forms tak­en are quite diverse and com­plex,” he con­tin­ues. In the IS03 course, we will study how to accom­pa­ny the pro­duc­tion of more sus­tain­able and user-friend­ly objects or services.

A CC adapted to the UTC model

Stu­dents who take the IS03 course will con­tin­ue to fol­low oth­er more tra­di­tion­al cours­es and they will there­fore have an addi­tion­al feath­er in their hats. How­ev­er, they will retain the pos­si­bil­i­ty of choos­ing the sec­tor and the approach which will suit them in fine. UTC’s a la carte course for­mat allows for this kind of evo­lu­tion. “Indeed, we can intro­duce new cours­es as we go along, with­out nec­es­sar­i­ly sud­den­ly call­ing into ques­tion what already exists. The CC will be based on con­fer­ences leav­ing an impor­tant place to exchanges. We will meet with col­leagues from sev­er­al branch­es to talk about method­ol­o­gy, tech­nol­o­gy, his­to­ry or phi­los­o­phy,’ says Stéphane Crozat. 

IS03 will then be based on a large group project that will last the whole semes­ter. Among the sub­jects envis­aged are “Eight bil­lion Inter­net users”, which will aim to enable Inter­net users to assess the envi­ron­men­tal foot­print of the web ser­vices they use. There is also Eco­CAD to embed rules, tools and meth­ods to facil­i­tate the inte­gra­tion of envi­ron­men­tal issues into a design tool. IS03 is open to all UTC stu­dents, regard­less of the major branch they are aim­ing for next.