Polytech Montpellier, elected Responsible Campus of the Year
Five years after being awarded the national "Sustainable Development and Social Responsibility" (SD&SR) label, Polytech Montpellier has confirmed its pioneering position in this field by winning this year's "Responsible Establishment of the Year" award at the "Trophées des Campus Responsables Francophones". This distinction crowns ten years of commitment and mobilization within the engineering school.
The Responsible Campuses Awards recognize higher education establishments that have implemented the most inspiring and innovative sustainable development projects. 27 projects were presented this year, by 19 French and international campuses committed to taking social and environmental issues into account in their activities and teaching.
Polytech Montpellier came out on top in the competition 's top category: Responsible School of the Year. To apply, each candidate had to present a project that had been running for more than five years. At Polytech, we made this commitment back in 2010," explains physicist Jean-Louis Bantignies, the school's DDRS project manager. So, this year, we decided that we were ready for this application and that we had some arguments to defend.
A fine euphemism, since it's a virtually exemplary action program that the Polytech team, led by its director Lionel Torres, has developed on campus over the years. " This initiative didn't come about overnight, but grew as we realized how important it was to trainfemale engineersin SDRS issues. Today,it's a strategic focus of our policy ". Back in 2016, Polytech Montpellier was one of the first ten French higher education establishments to be awarded the national DD&RS label. This recognition will be renewed in 2020.
A cross-functional approach
It was in 2012, to be precise, that the school decided to structure its DDRS action on the basis of the framework law, enacted during the Grenelle Environment Forum (2009), identifying the main thrusts of sustainable development and societal responsibility. Training, governance, environmental management, social policy and territorial roots, research and innovation - Polytech Montpellier's approach is intended to be cross-functional, through the intermediary of its teacher-researchers and staff. The primary objective is to ensure that all students, whatever their specialization, are aware of these issues.
To this end, "each student takes a test - the Polytest - to assess his or her knowledge of the UN's major Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Designed in-house, this test will soon be deployed throughout the French Polytech network , which comprises fifteen engineering schools and four associate schools ", explains Lionel Torres. " For us, this is the first step in training and awareness-raising, followed by a cross-disciplinary module on understanding the challenges of ecological transition. This will be in place for the start of the 2021/2022 academic year, and will form a common learning base for all our students," adds Jean-Louis Bantignies.
By students for students
And this is the DNA of Polytech's DDRS approach: a dynamic for students by students. One example of this is the series of conferences organized around DDRS issues. Last year's successful lecture by Jean-Marc Jancovici, an engineer specializing in energy and climate change, is a case in point. " It's the students who choose the guests, who contact them, who host the evening... We're there to support them, but they're the real players," insists the director. Other examples include last year's Ecotrophelia national prize for food innovation, won by Polytech thanks to a student initiative, and the Poly'Earth club, which has been actively involved in the school's SDRS policy since 2017.
Next year, the school will be going one step further by offering students a tool to measure the carbon impact generated by their international mobility. Presented in the form of a platform also designed by Polytech students, this tool dubbed Mobilan "aims to encourage them to make better choices when choosing their means of travel (plane, train, bus or other), taking into account not only price or speed, but also and above all their carbon footprint ", continues Lionel Torres.
A policy of continuous improvement
These measurement tools are part of Polytech's policy of continuous improvement. An imperative, according to Jean-Louis Bantignies: " There are often methodological problems surrounding these DDRS issues. When you set medium-term objectives, you need milestones to achieve them. We don't measure things enough; we need to periodically look at where we are, and adapt resources according to results. It's thanks to the measurement of DDRS indicators that we can set in motion a solid dynamic of continuous improvement ". In fact, in 2014, the school recruited a quality engineer whose mission is to measure this progress. The working group specially set up to steer the DDRS mission is now made up of six people, and is complemented on the training side by a committee comprising the referents for each engineering course.
Every two years, the engineering school produces a summary report of its activities. " Over the last two years, we have listed 115 awareness-raising and communication initiatives in the form of conferences, evening events, articles, newsletters, press releases, etc." explains Lionel Torres. As for the school's carbon footprint, it is carried out every few years by a teacher with specific expertise, accompanied by one or two groups of students responsible for measuring any progress made. " It's not always easy, and we don't always make as much progress as we'd like, but it's this self-evaluation that enables us to stay on course and explore blind spots," concludes Jean-Louis Bantignies.