The new Faculty of Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier University has now been created, to promote multidisciplinarity and professional integration.
By merging its UFR Mathematics, Computer Science and Management, Physics, Chemistry and Automatics, Life and Earth Sciences, Engineering Department, Modern Languages UFR and L1 inter-UFR department into a single entity - the Faculty of Science and Engineering - the University of Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier (UPS) is providing an innovative training response to the 9,000 students and 2,000 staff involved, in line with the needs and expectations of research, business and higher education. A complex restructuring project, with its Director, Jean-Marc Broto, elected on December 8 by the Councils of this new UFR.
Launched in 2009, this ambitious project to bring together all scientific and technological disciplines within a single UFR (Unité de Formation et de Recherche) - the Faculty of Science and Engineering, which includes the UPSSITECH engineering school and a Languages and Business Management department - has now been completed. This desire to bring science and engineering closer together is at the heart of the plans of the Conference of Deans and Directors of Scientific Departments in France, which wants to create a single "Science and Engineering" field.
Objectives: to develop multidisciplinarity, pool resources and increase contacts between players and disciplines, in order to respond appropriately to the challenges of cross-disciplinary training. This new range of courses has already been positively evaluated by the Agence d'Évaluation de la Recherche et de l'Enseigne- ment Supérieur (AERES), with very satisfactory results for most of the bachelor's degree courses, rated A and A+, as well as for the master's courses. This is a real turning point for Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier University, which will be strengthening its links between education and research, one of its historical specificities, and making the involvement of scientific research in university studies more visible.
Bringing science and engineering together: a strategic choice
Today, integration into the corporate world increasingly requires these dual skills. It has therefore become imperative to bring this dual culture to Master's graduates and engineers alike, in order to respond as effectively as possible to the new expectations of the economic world, on a European scale as well as internationally. From now on, fundamental sciences will no longer remain without applications, and engineers will be able to do more theses. The optimized simultaneous dual curriculum will enable students to integrate research, business and higher education in an operational manner.
A 2011 training offer harmonized across all disciplines
Since September, the first year has been divided into two main entry sectors: natural sciences and basic and applied sciences. A progressive orientation from the first year onwards, training students to be generalists, accompanied by measures to combat failure on the one hand, and to encourage their outreach on the other. This will raise awareness of the need for specialization right from the bachelor's degree, and open the door to a choice of 90 different master's specializations, covering all fields of science and engineering and enabling them to meet the entry requirements of research laboratories and companies alike.
A large-scale Director for this new Faculty
Jean-Marc Broto, a teacher-researcher in solid-state physics, collaborated with Albert Fert on the work that led to the Nobel Prize in Physics and to the development of today's computer hard disks. President of the Conférence des doyens et des directeurs d'UFR scientifiques de France (CDUS), he was local director of the former. UFR of Physics, Chemistry and Automatics.
Learn more: www.ups-tlse.fr