“I try to get students out of their bubble”

Marc Laperrouza’s first extended stay in China began in 1993, the year Bill Clinton took office as US President. “That was when people thought economic growth would usher in political change,” he says. China had just experienced “the equivalent of a century of transformation” in the space of just 25 years, and expectations for the country were understandably high. “But the hopes of those of us in the West – including mine – were dashed,” he says.

Yet instead of being put off by the Communist Party’s tightened fist, Laperrouza – an EPFL lecturer and scientist – chose to focus part of his teaching and research on the Asian giant. “Students in Switzerland live in a kind of bubble that doesn’t reflect the reality elsewhere in the world,” says Laperrouza. “I try to get students out of that bubble.” His goal is consistent with the primary objective of EPFL’s College of Humanities, where the SHS program is taught. That objective, he notes, is “to shift students’ mindsets away from technological determinism.” While Laperrouza’s aim is a notable one, it's also quite challenging. “More than one student has come up to me and said, ‘I didn’t sign up for this when I enrolled at EPFL!’”

Two forms of interdisciplinary study

When asked to describe the SHS program, Laperrouza replies that it’s “marginal but essential.” Marginal because it accounts for many fewer hours than the classes in students’ majors. And essential because it encourages students to decenter traditional narratives, gives them skills that round out their technical knowledge and exposes them to a “somewhat different” educational experience.

Students in Switzerland live in a kind of bubble that doesn’t reflect the reality elsewhere in the world,” says Laperrouza. “I try to get students out of that bubble.

Laperrouza holds a PhD from the London School of Economics, where he did his thesis on the reforms to China’s telecommunications industry. He takes a holistic approach to his teaching, going further than the basic learning objectives of the SHS program. “Ten years ago, I began combining two forms of interdisciplinary study,” he says. One consists of the interdisciplinary method inherent to the SHS program, as it brings together students from a broad range of majors. “This diversity is really stimulating – for both me and my students!” says Laperrouza. He gives the example of an intellectual property class where he asked students to “examine Novartis’s practice of evergreening its Glivec cancer drug.” He had students from numerous disciplines in the class, including some life science majors. “It was a heated debate, to say the least,” says Laperrouza.

The other form of interdisciplinary study relates to an initiative Laperrouza introduced in 2014 and that ended up in 2020 – the China Hardware Innovation Camp – where students from EPFL, the Lausanne University of Art and Design (ECAL) and the University of Lausanne (UNIL) worked in groups to design a connected device that they later took to Shenzhen for prototyping and testing.

In addition, Laperrouza gives a master’s-level Design for Sustainability class. Students work in groups of three – two EPFL engineers and one ECAL industrial designer – to “identify a design-related problem related to the elderly, energy savings, resilience or interspecies cohabitation, before developing a system to solve that problem and testing it outside EPFL.” This exercise gives students exposure to the reality of the market, which is important since “80% to 90% of them will end up working in industry,” says Laperrouza.

He gives the example of a student project where the team developed nesting spaces for lake birds. “The students went out and spoke with various interested parties and found that once a bird builds a nest on a boat, it’s illegal to try to remove it,” says Laperrouza. The project team therefore designed a small, floating wooden platform that can be attached beside a boat, encouraging birds to nest there rather than on the boat itself. The project resulted in the creation of a company called Birds&Co.

Putting the focus back on students

Although these projects are interesting and often lead to useful inventions, “they’re really just a tool for getting students to do what’s really important: decenter and think about the bigger picture,” says Laperrouza. That said, it’s not always easy to align a class curriculum with the given learning objectives – especially when you’re teaching students from different universities and backgrounds and who have very different class expectations. Laperrouza’s attempts to square this circle led to a book he wrote with two UNIL colleagues called Design Pédagogique (available in French only).

“Thinking about this issue made me realize that I’d become quite self-centered in how I approached my lectures,” says Laperrouza. “I’d say many professors – starting with me – tend to lose sight of the fact that students should be the primary focus in how their classes are designed.”