The traditional inaugural conference heralded the start of the academic year for first year students on Audencia’s Grande École programme. The 530 first year students came together at the Nantes Convention Centre to attend the events prepared by the school.

Audencia took advantage of the start to the 2020 academic year to highlight one of its strongest commitments: CSR, which is present in all the school’s teaching programmes. To present this issue to its students, Audencia was thinking on a global scale by inviting Nicolas Vanier, an explorer and director of the film The Last Trapper, Hugo Clément, a journalist renowned for his commitment to ecology, and Véronique Andrieux, Managing Director of WWF France, an institution that has been an Audencia partner for already 10 years.

 “Training responsible students”: this mission is at the heart of Audencia’s teaching. The school, which celebrated its 120^th anniversary, has sought to reassert its values via CSR. By inviting such experts, it definitely set the tone! They once again sounded the alarm regarding climate change or the considerable decline in the number of animal species that the world has witnessed over the last decades, as well as putting across the message, “there is still time to act!”

The grand barometer is an initiative set up by the “Ecological Awakening” collective which aims to generalise means of evaluating schools and universities regarding ecology and to promote sharing of good practices. The collective called on establishments to reply to a specific questionnaire regarding their commitments, to encourage ambitious transformations. It made the replies available for reading by students by publishing them on enseignement.pour-un-reveil-ecologique.org for guidance with courses and their commitments.

Several institutions seized the opportunity to ask themselves the right questions. Backed by their students, they mobilised to take stock about the suitability with ecological transition of their courses and research, life on their campuses, how they are run and the job prospects offered to their graduates.

Audencia naturaly took part in this barometer that allows establishments to display openness with regard to crucial ecological stakes. It also enables students to choose their school or university in accordance with relevant ecological criteria.

The participants on the MBA programmes arrive at Audencia with solid professional experience, looking for an inspiring course that will help to enhance their position as a responsible leader. In 2020, in addition to the themes covered during lessons, the “Businesses of tomorrow” elective saw the light of day on the Executive MBA and the Full-Time MBA participants had the opportunity to start their year with a module called “Sustainable business: from challenge to opportunity”.
“Businesses of tomorrow” focuses on a re-interpretation of the business context: companies, technologies and social as well as societal stakes. The objective is to provide concrete milestones (for example, the impactful business model) so that the participants become agents of change and to raise awareness of the multi-capital approach as well as the circular economy. “Sustainable business” allows international students on the Full-Time MBA to grasp the issue of change, its challenges and its opportunities. Through exploring the perspectives of “People/Planet/Prosperity” linked with the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals and, by discussing with experts, the participants hone their constructive critical thinking.

Gaïa will be the very first school launched by a Business School that is entirely dedicated to training in positive impact managerial strategies and methods, fully in line with the sustainable development goals. It will be used to build the careers, entrepreneurial initiatives and research work of tomorrow, based around the major dimensions of ecological and social transition. Gaïa will concern all Audencia’s students, whether in initial or continuing higher education, via immersions of differing lengths, but the school will also be accessible to all the students, without any preconditions of qualifications. A series of lessons and free activities, open to all, as well as a scholarship system, will allow all individuals deeply concerned by the major stakes of the present to gain qualifications or to retrain. At Gaïa, they will encounter energy sciences, biology, urban planning and also sociology, as well as all the disciplines of management approached from the angle of sustainable development, via concrete projects proposed by the school’s partners. Indeed, Gaïa will draw on a network of partners that share the same objectives. This network will include companies, players in the social and solidarity economies, NGOs, trade unions, public entities and other academic institutions, who will be housed in a new building designed to respect the most stringent environmental standards. This construction will become a rallying point for all those interested in shaping a different future.