Nutrition, new technologies, environmental and energy challenges, AI, robotics, nanotechnologies, intelligent buildings, the Internet of Things… The world is changing – and it is changing at a speed as yet unseen in human history.
Higher education is no exception; it is engaged in an increasingly fierce global competition for knowledge, challenged to meet the expectations of an ever-growing student community whose needs and expectations are evolving. It is up to us to develop our practices and teaching methods, to open up to the world, to train young graduates who are technically competent in their fields, that goes without saying- but beyond that, they should be capable of creating and taking action, of opening up to each individual and talking to anyone. In this equally exciting and uncertain context, engineering schools hold a key position: tomorrow, our young graduates will have the heavy responsibility of imagining and implementing the solutions, goods, and services that will shape the daily lives of the next generations.
With 5,000 students, 28,000 graduates, and 23 research laboratories, JUNIA is already a European leader. Well placed among Europe’s leading private not-for-profit higher education centres, it forms, together with the three historical schools it brings together – HEI, ISA, ISEN Lille – an association renowned for its sense of innovation, the quality of its research, its methods of collective intelligence, and its ability to listen to the world around it – to companies, of course, but beyond that, to society as a whole.
And in the future? We’re determined to go even further. Be more useful, more relevant, more imaginative, more sustainable. But how do we maintain our position and surpass ourselves? How can we use accumulated experience to better anticipate our future?
By making our campus the vehicle for this ambition. Over the next five years, the face of the buildings that house our students, researchers, teachers and teams will change. At the heart of the Catholic University in the Vauban-Esquermes district, our heritage combines certain elements that date back to the 19th century alongside others that are much more recent. The familiar silhouette of the buildings where we work and learn will evolve.
But this change is not a simple refurbishment, and it is far from being a run-of-the-mill property development plan. In fact, the transformation of this campus, which has always been part of the identity of the neighbourhood that surrounds it, is a vehicle.
An academic vehicle, driving the campus towards cutting-edge training, where our researchers will form the first testing ground for our expertise. It’s also a vehicle for development: JUNIA by no means separates itself from the neighbourhood in which it was born; the innovations that emerge there in conjunction with our academic, institutional, and economic partners will be used in all areas of the engineering industry: mobility, energy, buildings, services, uses of new technologies, life sciences, etc. It’s a committed tool, designed to transform the group’s ambitions of being a key player in the ecological, digital, energy, and societal transition that we are experiencing into reality.
A campus with a little something extra.
