Polytech Montpellier Named “Responsible Campus of the Year”
Five years after receiving the national “Sustainable Development and Social Responsibility” (DD&RS) certification, Polytech Montpellier has reaffirmed its pioneering role in this initiative by winning this year’s “Responsible Institution of the Year” award at the Francophone Responsible Campus Awards. This award crowns ten years of commitment and engagement within the engineering school.
The Responsible Campus Awards recognize higher education institutions that have implemented the most inspiring and innovative sustainable development projects. This year, 27 projects were submitted by 19 French and international campuses committed to addressing social and environmental issues in their activities and curricula.
Polytech Montpellier took first place in the competition’s top category: Responsible Institution of the Year. To apply, each candidate had to present a project that had been in place for more than five years. “At Polytech, we made this commitment back in 2010, ” explains physicist Jean-Louis Bantignies, the school’s sustainability coordinator. “So this year, we decided we were ready to apply and that we had a strong case to make.”
That’s quite an understatement, given that the Polytech team, led by its director Lionel Torres, has developed a nearly exemplary action plan on campus over the years. “This momentum didn’t happen overnight; it gained momentum as we gradually realized how important it is to train femaleengineers in issues related to sustainable development, research, and social responsibility. Today, it’s a strategic focus of our policy.” As early as 2016, Polytech Montpellier was among the top ten French higher education institutions to earn the national DD&RS certification. This recognition was renewed in 2020.
A cross-functional approach
It was in 2012, to be precise, that the school decided to structure its SD&SR initiatives based on the framework law enacted during the Grenelle Environment Forum (2009), which identified the main pillars of sustainable development and social responsibility. Through its Professors researchers, and staff, Polytech Montpellier’s approach—encompassing education, governance, environmental management, social policy and community engagement, as well as research and innovation—is designed to be cross-disciplinary. The primary goal is to ensure that every student, regardless of their field of study, is made aware of these issues.
To this end, “each student takes a test—the Polytest—that allows them to assess their knowledge of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Developed in-house, this test will soon be rolled out across the entire French Polytech network , which comprises fifteen engineering schools and four partner schools,” explains Lionel Torres. “For us, this is the first building block of education and awareness-raising, which will then lead into a cross-disciplinary module on understanding the challenges of the ecological transition. It will be implemented for the 2021–2022 academic year and will serve as a common foundation for all our students, ” adds Jean-Louis Bantignies.
By students, for students
And that is precisely the essence of the SDRS initiative launched by Polytech: a movement for students, by students. This is evident in the organization of lecture series on SDRS issues. We recall the success last year of the talk given by Jean-Marc Jancovici, an engineer specializing in energy and climate change. “It’s the students who choose the guests, contact them, and host the event… We’re there in the background to provide support, but they are the real driving force,” the director emphasizes. Other examples include the national Ecotrophelia Award for food innovation, which Polytech won last year thanks to a student-led initiative, and the Poly’Earth club, which has been actively involved in the school’s sustainable development policy since 2017.
Next year, the school will take this a step further by offering students a tool to measure the carbon footprint generated by their international travel. Presented as a platform also designed by Polytech students, this tool—called Mobilan— “aims to encourage them to make better choices about their modes of transportation (plane, train, bus, or others) by taking into account not only price or speed but also, and above all, their carbon footprint, ” continues Lionel Torres.
A Policy of Continuous Improvement
Measurement tools that support the policy of continuous improvement advocated by Polytech. According to Jean-Louis Bantignies, this is essential: “There are often methodological issues surrounding these DDRS matters. When we set medium-term goals, we need milestones to achieve them. We don’t measure things enough; we need to periodically assess our progress and adjust our approach based on the results. It is through measuring DDRS indicators that we set in motion a solid cycle of continuous improvement.” In fact, the school hired a quality engineer in 2014 whose mission is to measure this progress. The working group specifically formed to oversee the DDRS initiative now consists of six people and is supplemented on the educational side by a committee bringing together the coordinators from each engineering program.
Every two years, the engineering school compiles a summary report on its activities . “Over the past two years, we’ve listed 115 outreach and communication initiatives in the form of conferences, evening events, articles, newsletters, press releases, and more, ” explains Lionel Torres. The school’s carbon footprint assessment, meanwhile, is conducted on a multi-year basis by a faculty member with specialized expertise, assisted by one or two teams of three students tasked with measuring any progress. “It’s not always easy; we don’t always move as quickly as we’d like, but it’s this self-assessment process that allows us to stay on course and explore blind spots,” concludes Jean-Louis Bantignies.