Student Position Paper: POLYTECH Nice - Sophia, Université Côte d’Azur

Authors
Inès Aroul^a, Serge Rampon^a, Alizée Davias^a
a Université Côte d'Azur, Polytech Nice Sophia, Sophia Antipolis, France

 

Who are we?

We are students of Polytech Nice-Sophia concerned by current environmental issues and com-mitted to finding solutions at our university’s level. We are members of a student association, the Humanitarian and Environmental office, which initiates projects related to ecology and soli-darity.
 

Our thoughts

As students of Université Côte d'Azur, we have noticed the commitment of the teaching staff in the educational content they propose. We effectively have courses on environmental issues and training to make us aware of the impact of human activities on our planet. However, we would like to see these issues included more concretely in the subject matter of our training. This would help us to foresee the consequences of our future profession on the environment and possibly limit them. For example, implementing workshops or group projects on environmental subjects rather than theoreti-cal classes, would make students more involved. We also think it would be interesting to involve students in the calculation of their own carbon footprint as well as that of the school to raise aware-ness of the need for collective energy efficiency.
We are also grateful to our university for enthusiastically supporting ecological projects led by stu-dents, especially those set up by our association. Thanks to this support, we had the opportunity to plant trees on our campus after it was certified by the national bird protection league. We were also able to promote alternative means of transportation, and our future projects include installing a gar-den and insect houses on our campus.
In addition, our university is also implementing sustainable measures such as the installation of gar-bage sorting bins on campus, the upcoming installation of a compost bin, and collection points for used electronic devices. In addition, our engineering school has a true policy of energy preservation that includes the installation of solar panels and the renovation of premises. This could be improved especially as regards digital pollution, because we are submerged by e-mails that pollute our mail-boxes and are not even always read. It could therefore be relevant for the university to share infor-mation more efficiently, by setting up an announcement wall, for example.