For several years now, ENSTA Bretagne has led projects as part of the "Cordées de la Réussite" socially-oriented civic engagement initiative, in which engineering students mentor junior and senior high school students in scientific projects and act as "role models". ENSTA Bretagne is also running the "Equilibre" program for 6th and 7th grade students as well as "L Codent L créent", which seeks to encourage more women to enter the STEM professions by organizing computer coding workshops for girls.
Figures at a glance (2023/2024 academic year)
Support in line with the high school students’ needs, creating a strong "role model" effect.
Between 2 and 13 students provide mentoring in each school (on average, one engineering student supports 4 or 5 high school students). The form this mentoring takes is planned beforehand. Suitable projects are arranged based on such considerations as the school grade and the teachers’ expectations (and might include a coding workshop, design of wind turbine models or fun science experiments for example). As the engineering and high school students get to know each other better through the work sessions, this bonding process creates a powerful role model effect: it shows the mentees that STEM subjects are entirely within their grasp and encourages them to consider pursuing them in higher education.
A win-win initiative
The "Cordées de la Réussite" mentorship scheme and "Equilibre" and "L codent L créent" initiatives have proven to be win-win in the way they are beneficial for both the young mentees and student mentors alike. Such socially-oriented project engineering is an opportunity for students to develop key skills for their future engineering career, including communication (especially the ability to tailor their content to their audience), project management and teamwork.
During a humanities and social sciences module, they are asked to engage in a reflective exercise to get them thinking about the meaningful purpose of their action and the contribution made by such civic engagement.
Positive feedback
Feedback from the partner schools is extremely positive. The teaching staff highlight a certain open-mindedness in the subject choices of the mentees. These mentoring sessions are often decisive turning points, clearing up doubts and convincing each student of their ability to succeed.
A window into the engineering school
The scheme involves at least four sessions between the student mentors and high school mentees. A tour of ENSTA Bretagne is systematically organized, giving the mentees insight into the engineering students’ academic environment: classrooms, lecture theaters and the places where they relax and carry out extracurricular activities to share a little bit of their day-to-day.
The full range of these schemes, overseen by research professor Cécile Plaud, is constantly being developed every year.
