With over one hun­dred cours­es on offer, the UTC-THS Depart­ment (Tech­nol­o­gy, Social Sci­ences and Human­i­ties) is open to all UTC stu­dents: from the Core Pro­gramme to the PhD stu­dents, the five majors, to the Master’s degrees – notably in THS and its spe­cial­ty UxD (User Expe­ri­ence Design) and the Con­tin­u­ing Edu­ca­tion pro­gramme (all told, some 2450 stu­dents each semes­ter). It is the sheer diver­si­ty of the sub­jects taught that makes UTC engi­neer­ing train­ing so spe­cif­ic. Nathalie Darène, Direc­tor of UTC-TSH explains …

“The first thing that struck me when I con­sult­ed the UTC course cat­a­logue, was the sig­nif­i­cant­ly high num­ber of social sci­ence mod­ules on offer”, remarks Alexan­der, even today, three years after arriv­ing at UTC. Indeed it is note­wor­thy that stu­dents have no end of pos­si­ble course choic­es, run­ning from mar­ket­ing, to eco­nom­ics, to improv­ing lan­guage skills, to pub­lic speak­ing or epistemology.

“Cer­tain course descrip­tors may appear some­what strange to our stu­dents”, adds Nathalie Darène, Head of the UTCTSH Depart­ment. “I should add that our course offer is rather unique, since we rely large­ly on input from an aca­d­e­m­ic research lab­o­ra­to­ry.” Our UTC-THS Depart­ment was found­ed in 1986, and com­bines a set of social sci­ence and human­i­ties cours­es at UTC. Most of the lec­tur­ers are also research sci­en­tists at the UTC-Costech lab­o­ra­to­ry, whose objec­tives con­sist of analysing the rela­tion­ships that exist between Mankind, Soci­ety and Technology

“Notwith­stand­ing”, details Nathalie Darène, “these social sci­ence, human­i­ties-ori­ent­ed cours­es must be not be viewed as bolt-on addi­tions, but rather as inte­gral com­po­nents of the university’s over­all ped­a­gog­i­cal scheme. Our aim in propos­ing these cours­es is to have the stu­dents become more aware of the socio-tech­no­log­i­cal issues that they will encounter in their pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ties. Engi­neers must not be lim­it­ed to just design­ing prod­ucts and tech­nol­o­gy-inten­sive ser­vices, but they must envis­age the con­se­quences of their work on Mankind and on Soci­ety at large”. Con­se­quent­ly – ever since it was cre­at­ed – the UTCTHS Depart­ment oper­ates in close col­lab­o­ra­tion with the oth­er engi­neer­ing sci­ence depart­ments at the uni­ver­si­ty and with the part­ners in the socio­pro­fes­sion­al world. Nathalie Darène pur­sues “With the lec­tur­er-cum-research sci­en­tists of the THS Depart­ment, we are high­ly com­mit­ted to field trips, explor­ing and adapt­ing the con­tents of our cours­es to the real issues fac­ing engi­neers in entre­pre­neur­ial milieus. Our objec­tive in doing so is that as soon as our stu­dents come to grips with a project, they think through and analyse the under­ly­ing sociotech­no­log­i­cal prob­lems and ques­tions”. From major indus­tri­al groups to SMEs, there are a great many actors who tak­en part in and con­tribute to the THS courses.

In order to see the train­ing offer bet­ter scale to needs, Nathalie Darène and her col­leagues have launched a prospec­tive and strate­gic analy­sis of how and where THS Depart­ment stands. “Although our offer in social sci­ences and human­i­ties meets the cur­rent needs of the mar­ket-place, we do want to think about the future of these sub­jects over the com­ing years”. Via a num­ber of field tests, polls and enquiries, the research sci­en­tists-cum lec­tur­ers have set an objec­tive for their depart­ment, viz., to pre­pare their stu­dents to han­dle new knowl­edge and to coop­er­ate in dig­i­tal and inter­cul­tur­al exchanges and milieus. “The afore­men­tioned max­im sum­ma­rizes all the aims we enter­tain today: coop­er­a­tion refers to project co-con­struc­tion that can exist among stu­dents”, analy­ses Nathalie Darène. “Engi­neers pro­fes­sion­al­ly nev­er work alone, iso­lat­ed, locked away in ivory tow­ers …The notion “milieu” reflects the full con­text in which we bathe, part and par­cel of any project. By “dig­i­tal”, we rep­re­sent new tools and new ways to tack­le prob­lems. And last­ly, “inter­cul­tur­al” is to be con­strued in its wider con­no­ta­tion, in both the inter­na­tion­al reg­is­ter but also in regard to cul­tur­al inter­faces and links that exist between SMEs and major groups, etc

As an accom­pa­ni­ment for this over­ar­ch­ing aim, we must rethink the way social sci­ences and human­i­ties are taught at UTC, e.g., enabling the emer­gence of advanced pro­gramme items that specif­i­cal­ly address vol­un­teer stu­dents, notably an offer to car­ry out mini research projects dur­ing their intern­ships. This rep­re­sents is a size­able chal­lenge for our stu­dent engineers”. 

At the end of the day, what is the real impact of this social sci­ences and human­i­ties pol­i­cy thrust? “What the employ­er-com­pa­nies tell us reg­u­lar­ly is that our UTC grad­u­ates demon­strate a fine capac­i­ty to adapt and to adopt pos­i­tive prob­lem solv­ing skills and atti­tudes,” details the Head of UTC-THS. “We indeed encour­age these through our course offer and are proud that our grad­u­ates reflect and are rec­og­nized for these features”

ZOOMING IN ON THE UTC-COSTECH LAB.

Among the UTC research lab­o­ra­to­ries and an off­spring of the Tech­nol­o­gy and Social Sci­ences Depart­ment, the Costech Lab focus­es on the rela­tion­ships between Mankind, Soci­ety and Tech­nol­o­gy. There are three research Groups at UTC-Costech: the CRED (cog­ni­tive research and enac­tive design) which explores and analy­ses the tech­nol­o­gy-inten­sive com­po­nents of human expe­ri­ence. The CRI group (com­plex­i­ties, net­works and inno­va­tion) exam­ines the changeover from an indus­try-based econ­o­my to our cog­ni­tion, knowl­edge-based mod­ern cap­i­tal­ism. Last­ly, we have the EPIN group (dig­i­tal writ­ing, prac­tice and inter­ac­tions) which looks crit­i­cal­ly at new polit­i­cal, edu­ca­tion­al, cul­tur­al and in writ­ing itself, based on dig­i­tal tech­niques and technology