Ambition and missions

For several years, the higher education and research institutions of the Lyon Saint-Étienne site have been involved in a collaborative and structuring process for the site. The Excellence Initiative (IDEX)-labeled Université de Lyon 2020 project intends to create a world-class, research-intensive university with a strong regional foothold, known as the “Target University”. Its ambition must be aligned with two key objectives as follows:

• Strengthening student success by meeting the expectations communicated by students, businesses, employers and society as a whole; and
• Increasing the scientific production, quality and visibility of research.

This ambition is reflected:

• In research and innovation, by developing research at the heart of disciplines and on cross-cutting issues, benefiting both academic and socio-economic environments;
• In doctoral teaching, by setting up, on an international scale, one of the French centres of excellence for supervising doctoral students;
• In teaching and education, using new undergraduate models and by hybridising university and school models to build on the strengths of different systems, promote student success, and establish degrees as benchmarks for students and employers.

The path taken to achieve this ambition is reflected in an increase in international visibility, which should be reflected in the rankings but also in the concentration and quality of international partnerships. The overall objective for the next ten years is to position the Target University among the top five research-intensive universities in France and to improve its ranking in the top 100 of the world’s leading universities, with its specific attributes ensuring that it ranks first in several fields.

The Target University will be a new type of institution, a starting point on a trajectory towards 2030, in a momentum of transformation and innovation in the academic and organizational dimensions.

The missions of the new institution, the foundations of which we are laying down here, will be those of an research-intensive university, firmly dedicated to public service, and which meets societal and regional expectations, notably with regard to the welcoming and guiding students.

Our missions are the production of knowledge through research of the highest international level, the sharing of this knowledge for the benefit of society, the training of students in accordance with their aspirations and society’s expectations with regard to competences, civic responsibility and social advancement.

On this basis, the new institution has resolutely adopted a collection of values:

• Freedom, critical thinking and rationality as academic requirements;
• Collegiality and participation, opening up the governance to all stakeholders;
• Openness, diversity and equality, which are ground for excellence and creativity;
• Sustainable development and responsibility, by subscribing to a policy of continuous improvement and by supporting the energy and ecological transition of our societies;
• Quality of work life at the heart of the Target University's collective project.