ESCP to reach 100% of its students with a new core course for its MSc

SustainabilityESCP to reach 100% of its students with a new core course for its MSc

In the new strategy, Sustainability comes first, which comes as no surprise as the school was among the first to have a course on the subject, back in 1992. One of the main objectives is to train 100% of our students on sustainability.

To get closer to this ambition a new 30-hour core course within a new program has been developed for our MSc led by the sustainability academic department and the Masters’ team.

Over 800 MSc and MS students from all specialties trained on sustainability

Since January 2022, the DEAMIE (the advanced Studies diploma in International Business Management), a new training program of excellence brings together 19 MS and the MSc specializations programs from ESCP’s Paris, London, Madrid and Turin campuses.

One of the main features of this program is the harmonization of sustainability teachings by the creation of a common training core course, with the following pedagogical objectives:

• Provide a holistic understanding of the main sustainability challenges.
• Develop students' critical thinking and diagnosis capabilities through a multidisciplinary perspective on resources, climate and energy coupled with managerial and business insights.
• Learn to adapt and re-invent their professional practices within this new context.

The challenge of having online AND interactive sessions

Our 900 MS and MSc students take this course exclusively remotely, since they are all over our campuses. Thanks to our partnership with Axa Climate,our students benefit from the ‘Axa Climate School’ content in the first part of their learning process. Axa Climate School is an innovative tool dedicated to the understanding of the science behind sustainability and how one can act in his/her professional domain.

The second half of the course is based on 5 interdisciplinary modules to tackle transversal issues in a prospective manner. The topic we chose for this first edition revolve around the following questions:

01 - The place of consumption in our children’ societies
(led by Julien Schmitt)

02 - What will mega-cities look like in 2040?
(led by Valentina Carbone)

03 - Finance x climate in 2040
(led by Christophe Thibierge)

04 - The output of the digital transition : a dystopic or a utopian world?
(led by Aurélien Acquier)

05 - Evaluating sustainable performance and impact of organizations in the Anthropocene
(led by Fabrizio Grana)

Each of these questions is addressed through a masterclass, led by an ESCP professor and a roundtable, conducted through a multi-stakeholder dialogue (representatives from academia, business, think-tank).

Beyond this core content, we favored individual and collaborative engagement though several activities:

• Individual Ecological Footprint calculation and a plenary session to identify directions for improvement
• The co-construction of an “Sustainability Comics Wall of Fame” where students select, display and comment on comics, ironic images, vignettes linked to the sustainability transition.
• A global challenge among students: “3 minutes for the planet”, where in groups of 6, students were asked to shoot a video on a creative, innovative and impactful initiative meant to mitigate adapt to or mitigate climate change, biodiversity loss, resource scarcity, social inequalities.

The co-construction of an “Sustainability Comics Wall of Fame” where students select, display and comment on comics, ironic images, vignettes linked to the sustainability transition.A global challenge among students: “3 minutes for the planet”, where in groups of 6, students were asked to shoot a video on a creative, innovative and impactful initiative meant to mitigate adapt to or mitigate climate change, biodiversity loss, resource scarcity, social inequalities.