An American Island in a French Sea
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- Location, Location, Location
- Getting Down to Business
- The Global Nature of Work
- Mais je ne parle...je ne parle...je ne... Uh, English, please
- The Student Perspective
| Georgia Tech-Lorraine
An American Island in a French Sea Imagine, if you will, the strangeness of the following scene: I awake at a hotel in a charming French city--the sort of French city where the bakeries open before dawn to serve croissants and espressos to early-bird pedestrians on their way to work, where cathedral bells chime every half hour, where kids play accordions on the streets in the hopes of scoring some silver and gold colored change. I board one of the many buses (it's France, so the buses run frequently and reliably--at least when there isn't a strike) and ride ten minutes to a beautifully landscaped park (boasting a decent-sized lake and lush, green lawns) on which stand several sleek, modern buildings. And here, overlooking a lawn dotted with foraging European bird species (white-faced crows called rooks; enormous pigeons called woodpigeons; and small, skittish black and white birds called wagtails--actually, scratch that, this is France, so those birds are actually known locally as the corbeau freux, the pigeon ramier, and, of course, the bergonnette grise) I walk up to a building that sports two distinctive words that I have never seen in so unfamiliar a location before: "Georgia Tech." Once inside that building I hear the distinctive sounds of college students chatting away in English--American English--and find myself standing before a photograph, carefully hung on a wall in the administrative office, of Georgia Tech's mascot Buzz (or technically a person dressed in the Buzz outfit) riding around in the Ramblin' Wreck--that perennial symbol of Georgia Tech. It's as if I have stepped through some sort of interdimensional portal and been deposited right back into Atlanta. I half-expect my own supervisor to show up at any moment to ask me how this article is coming along. This is Georgia-Tech, but it is also Lorraine, France; it is, sensibly enough, Georgia Tech-Lorraine, or GT-L for short. Every year a few hundred students from both sides of the pond who are associated with Georgia Tech's schools of electrical and computer engineering, mechanical engineering, and computer science drop in for a few months to take classes and experience the same weird pleasure that I did in finding so American an island in so French a town. Location, Location, Location You have heard of Paris. It's the city of love, the city of light, the place where you can find the Mona Lisa (practice saying this in your most pretentious voice: "It's just soooo overrated") and the Eiffel Tower. It is a noisy, bustling place where swarms of tourists seek out the French ethos and swarms of locals demonstrate the French ethos. As you sit on a wicker chair turned towards the foot traffic (outdoor restaurant chairs in Paris are always arranged to offer the best people-watching perspective), you think to yourself, the French are so cool! All that stuff in the American media was so wrong! Well, OK, some of it was right, (oh those confounded strikes), but when you see Paris life happening right before you it makes more sense than it ever did in your Atlanta or Savannah or Vidalia City haunts. Paris is, like New York, a Great City. You cannot change it; it will only change you. And, also like New York, it can really, really, really wear you down. So if Paris is wearing you down, you just might want to buy a ticket for a seat on a comfortable train and ride, lasting about an hour and twenty minutes, that takes you past rolling green hills and farms to another France, a region called Lorraine and a city called Metz. Because here the pace of life is very different. Only about 125,000 people live in Metz, so you can forget all about how it felt being CRUSHED into a Paris subway car, abandon the obsessive-compulsive brushing of your pocket with your hand to make sure your wallet is still in there, and unscrew the complimentary foam earplugs you received on the flight over. Metz is also big and busy enough to offer the visitor tons of restaurant options, a shopping mall boulevard that sells clothes you and I probably cannot afford, and a lively Saturday morning market in front of the city's most massive cathedral. You can walk from one end of the town to the other in about 30 minutes. It's pretty perfect, size-wise. And if the pace of life here is too slow, well, there's always that short train ride back to Paris. Or, for that matter, to three other countries all within an hour's reach. In other words, Metz is very well situated. This is what we might call "a selling point" of the city. And with half of Europe's GDP within 400 miles of Metz, Georgia businesses are especially encouraged to drop in. Getting Down to Business I left the picture of Buzz and the Ramblin' Wreck behind and ascended the stairs to GT-L director Yves Berthelot's office for a history lesson. Berthelot's office overlooks the aforementioned beautifully-landscaped lawns and lake, beyond which one can see dorms (used by GT-L students) and the SUPELEC (L'École Supérieure d'Électricité), a technology school that Berthelot describes as "one of the best in France." The entire area and its buildings (a mix of universities and businesses) is collectively called the Technopole. The trim and smooth-shaven Berthelot makes me especially self-aware of my contrasting travel slovenliness (two weeks in France and Romania; shaving razor went dull and, in lieu of replacement, led to my accumulating a few days of [hopefully] fashionable stubble). He speaks crisp English in a light French accent and strikes perfect poise between cordiality and frankness, pride and modesty. The very first words out of his mouth are the admirably selfless, "I will start with the students, because that's really what it is all about: people and ideas." The idea of Georgia Tech-Lorraine was one of the many fruits of a long-running partnership between Georgia and the province of Lorraine. I've heard a lot about international "sister cities" and all that, but I always felt such stuff was just ceremonial and not really taken seriously by the participants (sort of like "Diana DeGarmo Day" in Snellville--a nice excuse for a party the day it's declared, but who will be celebrating it in 2015?). But when Lorraine's president, Jean-Marie Rausch, signed a "sistership agreement" with then-Georgia Governor Joe Frank Harris in the late 1980s a real relationship blossomed between the two regions that has led to major economic gains for both. "This was just farmland," Berthelot says of Metz. "In the 70s the economy here was going downhill because it was a steel-based and the steel industry was suffering. [Rausch] said, 'Let's transform it to a more high-tech region. Telecoms and chemicals and computers.' He said, 'Let's create a Technopole.' " Berthelot then notes with a dash of sentimentality, "It's a beautiful Technopole." And he's right. Looking out over the rolling green lawns and the stunning fall foliage one cannot imagine a much nicer place to come to work. Rausch sought an American university to add to the Technopole community, and after considering a number of cities narrowed his focus on the Atlanta area. The city's technology scene was booming; the phrase "technological capital of the south" was being bandied about, and Atlanta was readying its 1989 bid for the 1996 Olympic Games. BellSouth helped push the deal along, and by 1990 Georgia Tech-Lorraine had become a reality. Seventeen years on, GT-L plays a major role in encouraging businesses to invest on both sides of the pond. Explains Berthelot: "If you have a company in Lorraine that is eager to set a foot in the U.S., we encourage them to do that in Georgia, because of Georgia Tech. And so they open, they have access to the U.S. market, and hopefully they create jobs in Atlanta. That's the bottom line. The reverse is also true. We encourage Georgia companies to come and visit here, access the European market, and contribute to the economic growth of the region. So it's really developing opportunities for those companies." All fine and well for business, but what exactly is Georgia Tech doing here? "If you want research to grow, just think," Berthelot says. "What was Georgia Tech, maybe 50 years ago? It was really a Georgia school. Well, something happened in the late 20th century. Georgia Tech started becoming a national school in terms of research, in terms of students, in terms of everything. They opened up to the U.S. "It's the same thing that's happening at the international scale now. Georgia Tech is opening up to the world and with a very selective strategic partnership that will benefit the flow of ideas, research, and innovations. Innovation cannot come just from our little pot. We have to partner with strategic people, strategic groups doing great stuff. So if it benefits Georgia it benefits France also, it benefits science, it benefits innovation, that's how it is. It's really 'win-win.' " The Global Nature of Work Study-abroad programs have traditionally been more humanities-based ("study French literature...in France!"). But with the rise of the internet, the establishment of the World Trade Organization in 1995, and myriad other bellwether indicators, it has become clear that an awareness of the global economy and an understanding of international cultural practices will be essential tools for more than just fans of Voltaire. By offering engineering students a chance to study in France, GT-L has begun a novel experiment. Assistant professor Paul Voss actually did study French literature (if you want a tip, he recommends Camus's The Plague Years) before turning his focus towards physics. When I chatted with him it was clear he was 1) extremely bright and 2) very forgiving of my relative slowness (one of his polite rhetorical devices is to say, "So, you've probably also already considered that...", effectively giving me credit for something I had not actually considered but wish I had). He shares the story of one professor who asked his students what they were going to do after graduation. "One said, 'I haven’t decided. I found the companies I want to work for, and one of them's in Japan and one of them is in Germany, and I don’t know which one I want to go to.' What it means is that they're thinking more in an international framework. They’re ready to participate in a larger global corporation. Companies want people like that, that are open and ready to move and able to thrive in an international environment." I exchanged emails with Harry Bowden, a former GT-L student who came into the program by way of a partnership between Georgia Tech and his school, Morehouse College. Talk about a person who is "open and ready to move"; last month he celebrated his 21st birthday in Madagascar, where he is studying ecology and conservation. "I learned that I can do anything I put my mind to," he says. "I improved my French, not just by having to survive the trip to the grocery store CORA [http://www.cora.fr/] when I ran out of eggs, but by making French friends whom I speak to up till this day. International travel, especially to study, is an excellent way to gain an accurate awareness of the world around you. Not only this, but you grow through trial and error which, if you have a great sense of humor, can actually be fun!" Undergrads, graduate students, and even high schoolers have been touched by the Georgia Tech-Lorraine program. In addition to Georgia Tech students, every year a select group of students from Rockdale High School drop in for a week of sightseeing which includes a stop at GT-L (Rockdale partners with the Lycee de la Communication, or "Lycom" for short; students from the Lycee also drop into Rockdale for a week). The SURE (Summer Undergraduate Research in Engineering) program, borne out of conversations between Tech professor Gary May and Morehouse College's Jim Brown with guidance from Tech's Steve McLaughlin and Voss, is a partnership between Tech, Morehouse, Spelman, Emory, and Clark Atlanta. Why does Georgia Tech-Lorraine work with so many different U.S. students? Or, for that matter, why can't the United States, a country of 300 million, simply take care of its own technology research needs within its own borders? Voss outlines an interesting scenario: "If you look at the demographics of the U.S. it’s very clear that without increasing participation from a lot of groups we’re not going to have enough engineers and scientists to handle our needs in the future. Right now the majority of graduate students in the U.S. come from Asia. In engineering maybe 36% of PhDs in the U.S. are U.S. citizens. All the rest are non-U.S. citizens. My personal opinion is that the best thing is to keep [the non-U.S. citizen PhDs] in the U.S. because they are really, really bright people and they would contribute a lot to America if they stayed here. "But the question is, 'How many graduate students come to the U.S. from Japan?' And the answer right now is not very many. Especially in science and engineering. And the reason is because Japan has fully-developed science and engineering programs in their own country, so they don't really need to come to the U.S. anymore. So as China and India develop those abilities that's going to happen [in those countries also]. People are going to want to stay in their own country instead of wanting to go to the U.S. So where are the engineers going to come from?" As companies go multinational, myriad cultural issues arise that are best considered and addressed by people with a more worldly perspective. Voss offers the following interesting example: "[The GT-L students] visited the engineering center for Goodyear in Luxembourg. There’s a lot of engineering work going into tires. The EU requirements and the U.S. requirements are often different. You have different cars and different cars here, cars are different sizes--different companies making cars. And you also have different road surfaces, different conditions, different goals. There might be cultural differences in terms of what kind of tire you want. The market for high performance tires here might be higher, might be lower. The road engineering here is very different. If you drive in France you see that the roads are better than they are in the U.S. The roads are probably over-engineered!" Mais je ne parle...je ne parle...je ne...? Uh, English, please? GT-L undergraduates receive English-language instruction much as they would in Atlanta. This is partly by design. Kevin McFall, a young and affable professor in the midst of a two year stint at GT-L, notes that by removing the language issue many antsy students would be far more willing to consider an international study experience. "Students are always worried about their grades," he notes, "like 'Oh gosh, I got a B instead of an A just because I didn’t understand the language enough.' If you took that obstacle away then students would be more willing to go for it." (Of course, most of the undergrads I spoke with are trying to make some sort of progress in their French speaking skills anyway, since they benefit from such progress every day in their daily interactions. But in short, if you're an undergrad afraid to study at Metz because you don't speak French, do not be.) It's different for the masters students. They are working on a double degree, one from Georgia Tech and another from a French partner school. And going to a French partner school means speaking French. Masters student Katherine Rudell notes that at the beginning of her program "pretty much my whole entire class started with no French." But more French-heavy instruction begins to occur during the second year. If you're an undergrad who doesn't have to speak French at GT-L, then what can you get out of the experience of being in France? Rudell, who is a member of the BdE [Bureau des Elèves--GT-L's student government] and thus is tasked with coming up with ways to introduce the students to French culture, says, "How much effort you put into it is how much you get out of it...You're not really integrated into the [French] culture because pretty much everything at Technopole...you can use English. There's no real culture because you live in the dorms and then you don't know how to speak the language. What the BdE is trying to do is to push that integration and to make sure that it's not just studying at Georgia Tech; it's also the experience you have in learning about the different cultures and the differences between the cultures." The Student Perspective The BdE was planning trips and a Thanksgiving dance at the time I sat down with a group of GT-L students. My first several interviews at GT-L had been with faculty and administration who emphasized, well, much of what was written before: hard work, the global economy, competitiveness, the advantages to being tri-lingual, a lot of Serious Stuff. So it was a treat to sit down with a group of students and find that, while they were certainly bright and serious, they were also happy about their need to have fun. There was certainly more chatter about the upcoming Thanksgiving dance than about China's economic rise. Students ran the gamut from those who were merely curious to experience some sort of a European culture to others who particularly wanted to have a French experience. In the latter group, undergraduate Erica O'Neal seems fated to have come here; a childhood interest in French cooking shows and a grade school introduction to the French language has evolved into a full-blown love-affair with the country (she mentions that she's dating a guy who is half-French). But what of the stereotype of the French hating on Americans? "I think what bothers them is if you come to their country and are all like 'I'm American and I'm better than you,' " she says. "But if you really embrace their culture then they're happy. They're proud of their culture and they would love it if an American or any other nationality came and tried to adopt their culture. They're totally open to that." Pedro Perez has found the experience useful for reinforcing the French he learned in high school. "I go back and listen to some songs that I have in French and they make sense now." General subjects of conversation at the time (October) were the transportation strikes (these were a prelude to the more dramatic one that ground Paris to a halt in November), and the euro. The euro was at all-time high levels to the dollar (and it has gotten higher since). Adapting a tongue-in-cheek "ignorance is bliss" philosophy, undergrad Jessica Carter quipped, "You don't think about the exchange rate--ever!" The top activity for undergraduate students seems to be travel--an activity that GT-L's director Yves Berthelot strongly encourages. "We typically don't teach on Fridays," he says, "so that they have a long weekend so they can travel." (Lest you become too envious, "Trade-off is classes are an hour and a half," explains Carter. "We still get the same time in class.") Student government member Mohamad Abid has been working on organizing these excursions and activities (which have included visits to amusement parks and Go-Karting), and notes that last summer the average student took 15 trips in 12 weekends. "I don't even know how that's possible," he laughs. O'Neal rattles off some of the destinations she and her friends have visited. "Austria, Hungary, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, some kids are going to Italy, I'm going to Greece." Class sizes at the undergraduate level during the academic year are very small, which strengthens bonds between professors and students. (Class sizes for the graduate program and during the Summer program are comparable to those on the Atlanta campus). Professor Kevin McFall says that the largest class he has ever taught had 11 students in it. In fact, it is not unheard of for a class to have just one student. Even when the program is enlarged, he imagines that class sizes will still be kept small. This has changed his teaching style a bit as well. "Instead of giving so many formal lectures and homework, my students and I sit there in the lab with the problems they have to work on, so they can work through them in class with me there to help them move through things. You still have to be clever about choosing those problems so they cover the material you need, but it’s very nice because you can help the students one-on-one and I like that." I asked McFall, who has lived both in Sweden and Metz, about the personal pleasure he derives from living in Europe. What exactly do you get out of it? "I just really like the European life style," he says. "The small town, the convenient public transportation. The pace of life is slower--it’s not money! money! money! It’s more quality of life. Plus being able to travel. You learn a lot about yourself; you learn about how you fit into the world, and how Americans fit into the world." And loving Europe doesn't mean hating on America. As McFall notes, living in Europe also "really helps you to see what it is that I love about America--what are the things that are so good [in America] that we take for granted." Says Berthelot, "I want even elementary school kids to start thinking that traveling and having these kinds of opportunities is really, really available. They really can do it. If not with this program, maybe with others. But they should certainly do at least a year abroad to get started. They should really travel to see the world. It's so important." And with that thought in mind I leave the Technopole by bus, rolling along one of those ultra-smooth French roads, ultimately in pursuit of a baguette and coffee which I will enjoy under the stately auspices of the Cathedral of Metz. It may sound like a glamorous vacation to some, but for many--and possibly one day even for you--it's just everyday life. 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