Ingénieurs et Scientifiques de France (IESF)

On 16 June 2017, SEFI Secretary General Françoise Côme participated in the Club de Lamennais (IESF) meeting that brought together 31 directors, presidents, head of projects from a series of French grandes écoles, engineering associations and companies.

The invited speaker was Prof. Hervé Biausser, Director of CentraleSupelec (two major Grandes écoles that have merged in 2015. Presently, he is also co-president of the Ecole centrale of Beijing, Vice-president of Mahindra Ecole centrale in India and of Ecole centrale de Casablanca. He presented the success stories of these three new schools established by the Ecole centrale which has a pretty long experience of international collaboration, in the context of an increasing need for engineering studies in these regions of the world and of the new skills demanded by the employers, indicating that the curricula proposed in these three new engineering schools (offering normal French engineering curricula + one preliminary year of french language) were accredited by the French Commission des Titres (CTI). He also said a few words about the “Ecole 42″ (http://www.42.fr/) that is disruptive and might create confusion in terms of engineering education and recogniation of diplomas. The meeting was also a good opportunity for meeting and exchanging with French engineering stakeholders and promote SEFI.