Education

PSL launches a Bachelor's degree in positive impact to train future generations in the 17 Sustainable Development Goals

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With the aim of training a new generation of decision-makers to meet the challenges of the environmental, economic, and social transition, PSL (Paris Sciences & Lettres) has launched a top-tier program based on the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals. For the first time in France, the Bachelor's degree in positive impact will offer a program starting in the fall of 2020. 30 undergraduates will begin the first year of the course.

School of Positive Impact, lancée par PSL en partenariat avec BNP Paribas ©Laurent Ardhuin, Daniel Nicolaevsky, Hélène Mulot

By creating the first Bachelor's degree in positive impact available in France, PSL intends to train a new generation of graduates of higher education who will be future players in implementing the solutions that will positively impact the planet and society.
This PSL course, created thanks to financial support from BNP Paribas, is organized around the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. It will open in the fall of 2020, allowing students to focus their intellectual and civic learning around the aim of positive impact.

This new Bachelor’s program will attract students with a wide range of backgrounds and experiences. It will be based on a multidisciplinary foundation combining natural science, engineering, and humanities and social science. Its graduates will be able to continue their studies with a PSL Master’s or at a major international university while also enjoying a high rate of employability.

Candidates will be selected based on academic criteria as well as their motivation and personal commitment. An equal opportunity program will provide access to scholarships for students based on social criteria.

Alain Fuchs, PSL President, said: “We are betting a great deal on this innovative undergraduate program which, like all the courses offered by our university, was designed in close connection with the research carried out at our laboratories This Bachelor’s is a veritable training program for the mind, offering a global approach to issues that can only be addressed by drawing on a wide variety of disciplines, from the humanities and social sciences to hard sciences and even design. From this perspective, it could be considered emblematic of our university’s unique identity and responsibilities. Finally, it fits in with PSL’s more general effort to support the sustainable development goals, which began last June when PSL was appointed head of the SDSN France.”

The Bachelor's degree in positive impact is part of PSL’s research programs on sustainable development: Tara Oceans with the CNRS, Corail Labex with EPHE and EHESS, FCD Labex with Institut Louis Bachelier, the Migrations and Societies chair at Collège de France, the Climate Economics Chair at Université Paris-Dauphine, the major research program PSL-Environnement, the teaching on sustainable development at ISIGE-MINES ParisTech, etc.

 Réseau SDSN France : les universités et les grandes écoles s’engagent pour les objectifs de développement durable