Sustainable development in teaching at CentraleSupélec
Since 2020, CentraleSupélec has been actively engaged in sustainable development, integrating courses focused on climate and the low-carbon economy. Here is an opinion piece published by Pascal Da Costa, professor at the School, sustainable development advisor: energy, ecological and social transitions on the occasion of Sustainable Development Meetings which were held on our Paris-Saclay campus on October 11, 2023.
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« Since 2020, the major engineering school CentraleSupélec has been participating in the Sustainable Development Meetings (RDD) organized by theOpen Diplomacy Institute and its French partners. This participation coincides with my appointment as a referent for ecological transition in the founding member school of the University of Paris-Saclay. The analyses resulting from the annual RDDs have fueled my thinking as well as the various projects that we, with my colleagues and stakeholders, have been able to carry out over the past four years.
Based on a background in the Humanities and Social Sciences, my academic research today deals with topics at the interface of economics and engineering, such as the decarbonization of the economy, sustainable mobility systems, etc. I am therefore aware of the importance of holistic thinking or systems vision, the only ones capable of grasping the complexity of current transitions, which combine technical, human and ethical dimensions. This complexity therefore required us, at CentraleSupélec, to address these three dimensions in new courses...
Mapping the SDGs
Let's take a look back at these various projects to share our experience. How did we proceed? First, by mapping the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals in the CentraleSupélec engineering program, as well as in the publications of its research center. Then, based on these maps, we created new courses primarily focused on climate change, in our engineering program but also in the school's other programs (bachelor's degrees, university diplomas, Master's 2, doctoral programs, continuing and executive education programs). And in all these programs, we introduced new courses of various kinds (courses, conferences, projects, courses, etc.).
Soon, the courses on climate and decarbonized energy, currently mandatory for all our students, will be supplemented by the themes of Living Things and Ecosystem Services, and the availability of Mineral and Metallic Resources. Our vision is therefore to integrate what we call Planetary Boundaries into our various training courses, gradually, taking the time necessary to solidly build these complex concepts.
In this column, I highlighted positive results at CentraleSupélec, even though some excellent ideas on paper remained at the project stage and never came to fruition. So my advice to organizations "in transition" is simple: once your vision or overall project seems clear and shared internally by a core group, go for it! Don't wait for yet another validation phase that would remove all doubt or opposition. Take your risk, because the important thing is to experiment, to move forward step by step, and, if unsuccessful, to get back to work.
At the beginning of 2023, CentraleSupélec was awarded the DD&RS (Sustainable Development and Social Responsibility) label by its ministry and the stakeholders from the higher education sector participating in this national project (National Network of DD&RS Managers or circes). This framework provides a detailed and comprehensive framework for D&RS, facilitating the construction of a coherent project in a higher education institution (according to so-called strategic, training, research, etc. axes). Obtaining the label is peer recognition for CentraleSupélec, which demonstrates the validity of the approach adopted and the initial encouraging results. Of course, there are still many areas for improvement, and our membership in the network helps us identify them.
The school's commitment is also sincere and shared within its ranks. As proof:
1. The new ten-year strategic plan voted on by its Board of Directors last March, which places ecological and European sovereignty issues at the forefront of its future training and research;
2. The roadmap that the school will adopt this fall to decarbonize its activities, after having consolidated its carbon footprints for three years in a row on its various campuses;
3. The recent project to build personalized carbon balances for each laboratory in the school, based on the methodological basis of the Labos1point5 initiative.
These are all crucial projects that will enliven the school community in the months and years to come, in the face of contemporary ecological challenges, crises, and the many fears that arise. Action is salutary, or at the very least, it allows us to embody hope. The hope of participating, at our level, in the renewal of the idea of progress, an idea of the Age of Enlightenment, to align it with the preservation of the climate and natural ecosystems, in the interest of our future generations. »
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