The 20th
anniversary
edition
March 14 & 15, 2025
at UNESCO • Paris

In 2021, ESME became a "Société à Mission" (Mission-driven company), which is still rare in the academic world. As an engineering school, what are your objectives and how do you plan to implement them?

Véronique BONNET: Indeed, ESME is among the first French engineering schools to adopt this innovative legal structure, which highlights the commitment and ability of businesses to act for both economic development and the planet.

This evolution, made possible by the PACTE law, illustrates a strong desire to combine academic excellence with societal commitment. Following an in-depth internal reflection, we set ourselves three ambitious objectives.

At the heart of our priorities is the preparation of a new generation of engineers who are aware of environmental challenges. We aim to develop professionals who can integrate sustainability challenges into their decision-making processes.

Equality of opportunity is the second pillar of our approach. ESME is dedicated to ensuring the success of every student, regardless of gender, social background, or geographical origin.

The third key commitment focuses on the overall ecosystem of the school. To achieve this, ESME invests in training its teachers and staff, and strengthens its relationships with business partners to involve them in this approach.

ESME's programs are specifically designed to guide students towards sectors such as energy and digital technologies, which play a key role in the ecological transition. The societal demands on these sectors are growing, as they are critical for building a sustainable future. How are you adapting your educational programs to train engineers who can meet current and future societal expectations?

By becoming a société à mission, we initiated a profound transformation that impacts our governance, with the establishment of a mission committee, our organization, with the active involvement of our faculty and partners, and of course, our programs. An ambitious educational reform completely revamped our competency framework to systematically integrate sustainability challenges.

The new ESME engineering competency framework is distinguished by innovative competencies such as: “designing innovative and sustainable systems and services,” “systemically and holistically analyzing the impact of human activities on ecosystems and climate,” “developing critical thinking to inform decision-making,” and “leading organizational transformations with ethics and responsibility.” These competencies reflect our ambition to train engineers who can combine performance with positive individual and collective impact.

This visionary and essential project is based on in-depth pedagogical engineering work. Since 2020, the executive committee, in close collaboration with our teaching and pedagogical teams, has reinvented content, methods, and learning tools to address the challenges of tomorrow.

Beyond your educational objectives, what concrete actions has the institution put in place to improve its impact and strengthen its role as a committed school?

Beyond the courses, one of the most important levers for a school is the dynamics of student and associative life that develops among its students. We have therefore invested significant human and financial resources to ensure that student life at ESME contributes strongly and positively to our socio-ecological impact. This includes financing projects directly related to environmental protection or combating discrimination, as well as training and supporting those involved in the school’s student associations. Since becoming a société à mission, we have created a dedicated position to support this and each project seeking validation and/or funding from the school must demonstrate its consideration of social and environmental impacts.

In addition, in partnership with Vinci Energies, ESME conducted a carbon audit across all three scopes and implemented an action plan aimed at reducing its carbon footprint. This action is part of our societal mission objectives and is tracked in this context by the mission committee and during the OTI audit, which confirms this commitment.

Finally, the school has launched a very ambitious training plan for its teachers (in partnership with the Campus of Transition) and all its employees (in partnership with Climat’Sup from the INSA group).

You will participate in the Université de la terre in March 2025 for a session dedicated to team engagement in companies, focusing on transition dynamics. Are you preparing future engineers to become key players in the transitions of organizations?

This is one of our goals. The rise of artificial intelligence, the climate emergency, and the preservation of resources and biodiversity are central to all reflections and must now guide all decisions. They require the ability to evolve in environments that reach unprecedented levels of complexity and uncertainty, necessitating a complete overhaul of project and organizational management processes. To prepare our future graduates to face these situations, we must multiply experiences, expose them to unforeseen situations, get them used to collaborating with experts from other fields and cultures, and cultivate their taste for the unknown and discovery.

ESME is soon organizing an exhibition linking Art and Digital Technology. Could you tell us more about this initiative?

The question of whether technology distances us from our humanity is often raised in debates. The digital art exhibition Humain Re-Connection organized by ESME is an invitation to rethink the role of technology in our lives and rediscover the poetry hidden in algorithms, elementary particles, and interactive interfaces. After the first edition dedicated to living organisms with Nature Re-Connection, this immersive artistic journey takes us into a world where humans and technology engage in dialogue. It aims to make high school students and the public reflect on the role of humanity in innovation.

The exhibition will be open to the public from January 22 to 25, 2025, at our Paris campus, located at 34 Rue de Fleurus, in the 6th arrondissement. You can already register via this link.