Sustainable development and digital technology at the heart of the issues in the INSA education of the future

To meet the major challenges of our time, INSA Lyon is reinventing itself. Frédéric Fotiadu, Director of INSA Lyon, presents his vision of a fundamental change for the school.

‘The period we are currently going through is having a major impact on our organisation. However, the unprecedented challenges that it raises in the short term and for many months to come should not distract us from major transformation projects that have already been initiated and are of high strategic importance for our future. This is the case for education development, the result of significant collective action, which led to a roadmap voted for by a large majority of the INSA Lyon Board of Directors.

Through this education development, it is really a question of being in tune, or even ahead of the game, with the new challenges of our time. In my view, organisations are today facing three major transitions: an ecological and environmental transition, a digital transition and a social transition. In addition to these challenges shared by all socio-economic players, there are two issues to which the degree of exposure varies significantly depending on the sectors concerned: a transition of the economic model and an institutional transition, i.e. interaction with all the stakeholders in an ecosystem.

Our engineers, more than ever, are at the heart of these issues. Firstly, because they master the technology underlying all human activity, but also because they perceive its societal and environmental impacts.

This eminently strategic position makes them first-rate representatives and decision-makers to support and initiate the transformation of companies, to change their organisation and core business and to develop new activities.

The ambition to remain at the forefront of this technical expertise and to be even more at the heart of the decision-making process is what drives us today, after several months of collective work involving staff and students, to develop our education around two main points: to educate our engineers more directly on issues of Sustainable Development and Social Responsibility, with a particular emphasis on the issue of global warming, and to improve their mastery of digital concepts and technologies.

Another project concerns changes to our general educational environment. Our students will be educated even more in engineering sciences from the first year, as part of a cross-curricular approach to the subjects taught. In this way, we will move away from a model that could be likened to that of preparatory classes during the first two years of education at INSA, giving even more meaning to our teaching from the very start of the course. Finally, this necessary development is motivated by the reform of the baccalaureate, which will bring us a greater variety of profiles, to which we will have to adapt our course content.

These changes in education have been driven by the strong and long-standing involvement of the institution's teaching and student communities, particularly in the field of sustainable development and social responsibility. They also echo the institution's forward-looking approach, now extended to the INSA Group, which has enabled a large number of INSA staff and students as well as external partners to be involved in the reflection. The result is a roadmap, which sets the course for the coming years, and at the same time provides a starting point for the transition to concrete achievements.
As Director of INSA Lyon, I am particularly happy and proud to see our institution take this path. It demonstrates our ability to remain flexible in order to educate key players for tomorrow's world in a drive for scientific, economic, social and environmental performance’.   

Frédéric Fotiadu,

Director of INSA Lyon 

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