Last year, The New York Times named Metz, the capital of France’s northeastern Lorraine region, one of 44 Places to Go. The small city offers travelers a mix of treasures ancient and modern, from its towering gothic Cathedrale St. Etienne, boasting stained-glass windows by artist Marc Chagall, to the new Centre Pompidou-Metz, a branch of the Paris modern and contemporary art museum.
While it may not be on the travel itinerary of many tourists, Georgia Tech Lorraine — the European campus of Georgia Tech — for two decades has made Metz a destination for international students wishing to get a first-rate engineering education and students of Tech’s Atlanta campus hoping to do some sightseeing while working toward a degree. And with the recent establishment of a nonprofit foundation to support the campus and the opening of a technology development center by the end of this year, Georgia Tech Lorraine is primed for higher visibility.
Georgia Tech Lorraine, which began offering graduate classes through the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering in 1990, now provides graduate programs in mechanical engineering and computer science as well as undergraduate courses. More than 2,500 undergraduate and graduate students and 100 Georgia Tech faculty members have spent at least a semester on the campus.
In June, more than 260 alumni and friends of the Georgia Tech Lorraine program gathered on the Champs-Elysees in Paris to celebrate the satellite campus’ 20th anniversary. Among them were Georgia Tech President G. P. “Bud” Peterson and his wife, Val, who made their first visit to the Metz campus.
Despite being a relatively small group compared to the more than 125,000 living alumni of the Atlanta campus, Georgia Tech Lorraine’s alumni are energetic and enthusiastic, said Yves Berthelot, president of the campus since 2006. Alumni, most of them in their 20s, 30s or early 40s, already have formed the GT Club de France (gtclubdefrance.com). Membership is open not just to Georgia Tech graduates who spent a semester or more in Lorraine but also to any of the Tech alumni living in Europe. Club members meet monthly. This past summer, they gathered to watch World Cup matches together.
They’re “very young alumni, very dynamic, and a lot of them are honestly on the fast track, getting into important positions in good global companies,” Berthelot said. “I think that’s a fabulous source of energy to promote Georgia Tech’s values and business overseas and in Georgia Tech research and networking. It’s just a very exciting group.”
Among the program’s earliest graduates is John Ball, who earned a master’s degree in electrical engineering in 1992 through a joint program between Georgia Tech Lorraine and Supelec, one of the top French engineering schools. In a post on the Georgia Tech Lorraine Web site, Ball recalled arriving at Metz as one of the program’s inaugural class of five students in 1990. “I left for France without knowing any French and not knowing exactly where I was going,” he wrote. “The program was so new, there wasn’t even a building when I arrived. Despite the initial physical limitations, my time at GTL proved to be a cultural awakening and an experience that propelled me into international entrepreneurialism.”
By the time he graduated, Ball spoke French fluently and had developed a “global perspective.” He has held leadership roles with several global software firms and now is CEO at KXEN, a provider of next-generation business-analytics software.
“I developed my global commerce skills at Georgia Tech Lorraine and Supelec, and it’s clear that without my time there, I wouldn’t be in the position I am today,” he wrote.
Berthelot said Georgia Tech Lorraine’s graduates are willing to take risks and be put in unfamiliar territory.
“Students who come back from Georgia Tech Lorraine are often truly transformed in many ways,” he said. “It builds character. And how do you teach that? Well, through experiences. And Georgia Tech Lorraine is one of those experiences that helps build character.”
Berthelot said many of the American students’ studies at Lorraine mark their first trips outside of the United States. With classes held only four days a week, Georgia Tech Lorraine offers students plenty of time to venture off campus on long weekends to explore European culture. From the Metz station, students can board a high-speed train and be whisked away to Paris in about 80 minutes.
This past summer, 220 Atlanta-based Tech students opted to spend 10 weeks studying and sightseeing in France.
“The students who enroll in our program are willing to be pushed a little bit beyond their comfort zone, and that’s really what differentiates them,” Berthelot said. “That’s why companies are so interested in hiring our graduates.”
Berthelot can identify with his students. A native of Paris, he grew up just a mile from the Eiffel Tower but attended colleges in three different countries. After earning degrees in France and the United Kingdom, he moved to the United States, where he received a doctorate from the University of Texas at Austin. Berthelot joined the faculty in the School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech in 1985.
“It’s great to see your country and your culture in a mirror,” Berthelot said. “You see it through the eyes of others. You see what’s good about it, maybe what others are criticizing. It just forces you to listen and be more in tune with others. It’s just a different viewpoint in many cases, and it’s very enriching.”
Although Georgia Tech Lorraine is attended by American, French and international students, its classes are taught in English by Georgia Tech professors, and the course work is no different than that on the Atlanta campus. This fall, 107 undergraduate and graduate students are enrolled.
“We are Georgia Tech,” Berthelot said. “You walk in the building and everything is in English. … We don’t yet have a football team, but we do have students who bring a football and teach the French kids how to play. So it’s part of the exchange of culture.”
Berthelot said he hopes the strong tradition of alumni philanthropy at Georgia Tech will extend to the Institute’s Metz campus. Recent changes in French tax laws have made possible the establishment of the Georgia Tech Lorraine Foundation, through which alumni may contribute to the continued success of the program.
And while Tech’s gridiron heritage is not yet established in Europe, its history of cutting-edge research is firmly planted in Metz soil. In 2006, Georgia Tech Lorraine established an international research lab. The UMI, a joint venture between Georgia Tech and the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, brings together Lorraine graduate students and faculty with grad students from French universities for collaborative research in such fields as secure networks, advanced materials and cognitive robotics.
Berthelot said the laboratory’s growth in the past four years has been tremendous, with increased research funding and visibility through publications in research journals.
“A lot of research dollars are flowing through that lab, or I should say research Euros,” he said. “It enables us to be plugged into a network of excellence in educational research and with companies to achieve some great research. It enables us to do some things that we would not necessarily do if we were just in America.”
In 2008, a satellite post of the laboratory was created at Tech’s North Avenue campus, where researchers from Georgia Tech Lorraine and France may team with Institute counterparts in Atlanta.
“It’s truly an international lab without physical boundaries between France and the United States,” Berthelot said. “A lot of exciting things happen with the flow of ideas and people across boundaries. That’s how technology is really developed.”
Earlier this year, Georgia Tech Lorraine announced the establishment of a facility on campus dedicated to bringing technology created in the lab to market. The Lafayette Institute, scheduled to open by the end of the year with funding from the French government, will couple a state-of-the-art clean room with an enterprise innovation center. Berthelot said the facility will be modeled after the Atlanta campus’ Marcus Nanotechnology Building and Enterprise Innovation Institute.
“What we want to do is innovation all the way to commercialization of optoelectronic devices, new semiconductors or organic, flexible electronics, things like that. There’s a huge market for it. Europe is a leader in that field,” Berthelot said.
“Georgia Tech can be placed at the heart of some very stimulating industrial R&D in Europe, and we can bring to the plate the experiences we have from Atlanta … and that gives us instant credibility,” he said. “For the French to see that Georgia Tech wants to come and have researchers and people doing business in this, it’s very exciting for them.”
The creation of the Lafayette Institute will be among the recent developments spotlighted in an upcoming series of events hosted by the Consulate General of France in Atlanta and Georgia Tech to further promote collaborations between France and the Southeastern United States. France-Atlanta: Together Towards Innovation, which will be held Nov. 29 through Dec. 12 in Atlanta, will feature business workshops, scientific symposiums, cultural activities and humanitarian-related events. A number of the events will be held on the Georgia Tech campus. More information may be found at france-atlanta.org.
The president of the Lorraine region, Jean-Pierre Masseret, the mayor of Metz, Dominique Gros, and Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed all are anticipated to attend.
Berthelot expects the event will bring more attention to research at Georgia Tech’s campuses in Atlanta and Metz.
“I would say 20 years ago Georgia Tech’s name was not really recognized in France except by a few engineers. But if you look now, Georgia Tech’s name has really become a known entity,” Berthelot said.
“There are two reasons for that. One, Georgia Tech has done fabulously well in the past 20 years — it’s gone up in the rankings, and it’s just a phenomenal competitor on the international scale. But, in part, it’s also because we have now over 1,100 Georgia Tech alumni in France, most of them being students who went through GTL, and publications, articles, the UMI, the Lafayette Institute. … People hear the name Georgia Tech, and they associate it with excellence. So that’s wonderful. We’re increasing the reputation of Georgia Tech. That’s one very important goal of GTL: We don’t compromise on quality, and we increase the reputation globally.”
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