EPFL launches of sustainability course for all first-year students

This first meeting of the course took place as part of the Grand Témoin ceremony, at the SwissTech Convention Center. EPFL's new Provost Ambrogio Fasoli, co-director of the environmental engineering section Alexis Berne, SHS program director Rudolf Mahrer and sustainability course leader Jérôme Chappellaz, introduced the ceremony by presenting EPFL's challenges and organization around sustainability issues.

During the second hour of the event, the audience was privileged to welcome renowned climatologist Valérie Masson-Delmotte, interviewed live by RTS and EPFL journalist Anne Laure Gannac. Masson-Delmotte shared her extraordinary knowledge and experience of climate and sustainability issues in relation to science, poetry and communication, and then took questions from the audience.

The ceremony also welcomed illustrator Léandre Ackermann, who produced live drawings in line with the discussions.

How to organize the logistics and pedagogy of such a large-scale course

While this first course was given at the SwissTech Convention Center, the only venue on campus large enough to accommodate almost 2000 people, this venue is of course not available on a weekly basis. Therefore, a new course format had to be designed.

The course, led by Jérôme Chappellaz, is taught as a flipped classroom, meaning that each week students receive videos recorded by the 12 teachers and contributors. The students then have until Monday at 9am to consult these videos, ask questions and take quizzes. On Tuesdays, during their two hours of class time, students have a videoconference exchange with teachers on the materials studied, and an interactive workshop in groups of 60, with the assistance of some 50 master’s and 15 PhD students trained to assist in teaching this course. The semester concludes with small-group work on a case study in systems thinking. The course is organized by the Environmental Sciences and Engineering Section (ENAC) and the Social Sciences and Humanities program(CDH) at EPFL.

It's an important course, at the intersection of the so-called hard sciences, the humanities and social sciences, economics and politics, with the aim to create enlightened engineers and architects who understand what's at stake in the world, and who reflect on their future professional footprint through the prism of sustainability.

Video of the ceremony