The Grande École Program

A unique course exists in order to enable students to acquire management and leadership skills even before they graduate, by supporting and managing other groups of younger students. During the Managing Diversity in Vivo course, each student trained in management, leadership and group communication becomes the “manager” of a group of Bachelor Cycle students.

This course has two main positive effects:

• Facilitating the integration of Bachelor Cycle students, particularly in their transition from secondary to higher education with the help of a mentor.
• Providing each Master Cycle student with an “in Vivo” management experience in an intercultural context.

Because ethical, environmental and responsible dimensions are at the heart of today’s issues, students collaborate with companies on real environmental issues or more globally related to CSR on the occasion of the transversal project PPP (People-Planet-Profit). To carry out this project, students will have to put into practice the teachings of the following courses: Sustainability Strategies, Management Control, Financial Analysis, People and Organization Management, Digital Innovation and Resource Management. The combination of the knowledge provided to students during the courses and their application to concrete cases thus allows them to become aware of CSR, the environment and ethics.

Examples of past projects, covering a multitude of indsutries:

• Fashion/ready-to-wear industry: CSR Creation Pack. The objective: to propose an annual calendar of a collaborator’s “CSR life moments” and to work more in depth on a “CSR life moment” (program, budget, and research related to service providers).
• High-end ready-to-wear industry: disabilities in companies. What innovative policy should be used to meet the challenges of recruitment?
• Banking industry: what are the impacts of climate-related risks on the banking industry?

Seeing as IÉSEG trains changemakers, students will follow a newly designed course on positive leadership, which is based on pedagogical innovation, combining physical and remote learning, simulations, role-playing, etc.

During every semester of the Bachelor Cycle, students will also follow open-mindedness courses to increase their awareness of the world and of themselves (example: sociology, history, etc.).

During the first two semesters of the Grande École Program, students will benefit from teaching aimed at developing their awareness of themselves, of others, and meant to teach them how to work on their relationships with other people. For instance, during a seminar, and in order to work on efficiency in their relationships with each other, students will address the “framework” of a collective work and underlying values, interpersonal communication and types of expression in a collective project.

In self-assertion through theater courses, they will work on: listening, positioning, looking, space, breathing, emotion, action verbs, improvisation, the principle of dissociation and letting go.

With the “creativity, self-confidence and collective intelligence” hub, students will learn to:

• Develop their empathy of situations and of the people involved.
• Leave their comfort zones and find their bearings.
• Know themselves better: their engagement, motivation, and driving forces.
• Gain a better understanding of how things work: mobilize their resources, become aware of their postures, communicate, and manage pressure.
• Make the link between reactions/needs and emotions within a group or in their personal life.
• Express themselves in a group setting, all the while respecting themselves and their teammates.
• Accept differences, consider everyone’s talents, and learn how to put them best to use.
• Be actively engaged in relationships with other people: collaboration, place, role, and affirmation.