The values that “make” Icam
Since its creation in 1898, Icam has grown, in France and around the world, remaining deeply rooted in its values: audacity, trust, freedom, responsibility, solidarity and collective success.
Its essential mission is to train free, conscious, committed and actor engineers in their lives. All courses at the Icam are designed to develop these qualities, which are the common denominator of all students and alumni.
Opening up to others and the world
To succeed in this mission, Icam relies, for example, on the Decision Making Approach (DMA), a legacy of the School’s Jesuit foundations: it invites students, through regular times of rereading, to explore and experience what “makes sense” to them and thus guides all their choices, in an informed way.
Students are also invited to go out of their comfort zones, through social missions, personal projects and international study opportunities, which open them to other cultures and realities, sharpening their vision of the world and its realities.
Life in residence Icam is also an integral part of the educational experience: students learn the values of exchange, sharing, respect, co-responsibility and openness to others.
Social diversity is encouraged by scholarships and honorary loans and thus opens up campuses to as diverse an audience as possible. Engineering students also interact with students in production schools, some for school support, others for technical co-working, with the idea of real reciprocity.
Audace and Development
Icam is indeed guided by audacity in each of its projects.
The audacity to develop in a singular way, by opening campuses primarily in countries facing major challenges of demographic and economic development (Africa, India, Brazil…), in order to train young engineers in and for their country.
The audacity to fully integrate educational innovations PBL (problem based learning), reverse classes, etc. – which build on infrastructures such as the digital campus, making it easier to share courses and use all business software with BYOD (bring bring) technology your own device), or the “Fab Lab”, real places of innovation and creation.
The audacity, finally, to open up to different candidates by creating the “Parcours Ouvert”, in 2018, accessible to students from all countries entering university and oriented towards engineering. Entirely designed around innovative pedagogies that foster creativity, it opens up new perspectives for hundreds of young people and offers a different vision of the engineering profession: more
The 4 Icam pillars
In 1898, the Icam industrialist founders together with the Society of Jesus created the engineering program using the Jesuit educational principles as a foundation: learning from experience in a social and interactive way, openness and commitment to one’s social surroundings, personal reflection, positive and dynamic projection in a personal project, global engagement in a unity of hand, heart, mind and soul, seeking of the greatest human and social growth.
Today Icam is taking part in the global priorities of the Society of Jesus formulated in the 4 Apostolic preferences:
- Journeying with youth for a “hope-filled” future
- Developing spiritual depth
- Caring for our common home
- Walking with the excluded
Icam is co-founder of IAJES – International association of Jesuit Engineering schools. This network brings together 50 engineering schools from all over the world and offers many opportunities for exchange and collaboration.
