PROFESSORIAL
AND RESEARCH
CHAIRS
FUNDING FOR CHAIRS:
SERVING AN AMBITIOUS
EDUCATION POLICY
Total is a major economic
force in our 130 host
countries through our oil,
gas and chemical activities.
As a responsible industrial
operator, we do more than
just support economic
development; we also invest
in the resources and
capabilities required to
nurture human development.
To that end, Total pursues an education policy
focusing on four areas:
• Educational facilities
• Educational support and funding
• Education projects developed in cooperation
with host country governments
• University-industry collaboration
Our higher education partnerships focus both on
transferring knowledge and familiarizing students
with Total and our activities. They take the form
of professorial and/or research chairs.
Chairs give Total a way to support teaching and
research teams dedicated to a specific, well-defined
subject related to the issues we face. We currently
fund or co-fund around 30 professorial
and/or research chairs at prestigious schools
and research centers worldwide.
All involve long-term contracts, usually lasting
four or five years.
A COMMITMENT:
FORGING WIN-WIN
PARTNERSHIPS
Schools and research
organizations seeking
funding regularly contact
Total. In order to consider
their requests transparently
and objectively, our selection
criteria are based on six key
principles.
1 • Priority is given to chairs that combine teaching
and research. This addresses our training,
recruitment and R&D needs.
2 • The chair’s field must be of interest to Total,
as part of a broad-based, open-ended vision
of our issues. It must be clearly defined and spelled
out. Results must be able to be evaluated and,
if applicable, published.
3 • Total favors partners that are strategically
positioned in relation to our own recruiting
and/or R&D challenges.
4 • For the sake of efficiency, the chair must be part
of an existing teaching and research program.
Because the funding agreements have limited terms,
the chair must have been created before the
agreement is signed.
5 • The chair’s governance must be clear and
controlled. The resources provided have to be
managed strictly, transparently and ethically. To make
sure that happens, Total agrees to participate actively
in the chair’s steering committee.
6 • Each partner must commit to promoting the chair
and communicating about it effectively.
“THE RESULT
OF A CLOSER
RELATIONSHIP
BETWEEN TOTAL
AND OUR PARTNERS”
INTERVIEW WITH
JEAN-FRANÇOIS MINSTER,
Senior Vice President,
Scientific Development, Total
> What is the reasoning behind
the funding of professorial
and/or research chairs?
Chairs are highly visible and offer
benefits that go well beyond that
of supporting a thesis project in a
laboratory. Financing a professorial
or research chair means making a
commitment to a world-class professor
or team and their institution. For Total, it
also establishes a long-term relationship
with a research or teaching institute.
> What does Total bring to chairs
and what does it get out of them?
For our partners, it is chiefly a way
to secure funding to improve teaching
and delve more deeply into research
topics. On our side, we only help fund
a chair if we think that it will be effective
for the school or institution and beneficial
to Total and if they can strengthen a
partnership and enhance an existing
program. The field covered by the chair
must address the major issues we face,
in a broad-based, open-ended way.
In other words, we don’t fund chairs
for the image value, even though image
is a significant indirect benefit.
The partner institution also benefits,
by showing that it’s in close touch
with the business world.
That’s important today to attract
the world’s best students.
> What are the keys
to a chair’s success?
At the outset, we must rigorously vet and
select the chair and its team, with the
school or institution obviously retaining
primary responsibility for the quality of
the instruction provided or research
conducted. We help define the chair’s
area of specialization with our partners.
Next, it is imperative to set up a system
for monitoring the chair’s work, through
a full-fledged partnership with the school
or research facility. This assumes that the
person responsible for the chair at Total
is actively involved in its governance and
reports regularly to the company, so that
we get the most we can out of it.
our issues. Funding chairs is part of our
innovation process, but not solely from
a technology standpoint. An innovative
company is one that can adapt to our
changing world. To do that, you have
to understand the changes. The chair
on contemporary Africa that we’re
funding at MIT is a good example of this.
> To what extent do these chairs
promote close ties among students,
researchers, school or institution
directors and Total?
Only if the Total employee monitoring
the chair takes his or her role to heart
can we create a close relationship with
the chair team. It’s what enables us to
shape the chair’s content, modify it with
our partner and set up other programs
such as the scholarships that allow
students to conduct research at the
institution or at Total.
> How would you assess the activity
> How do chairs contribute
to R&D and, more broadly,
innovation at Total?
Although chairs are one tool in the
research and development process,
they’re not a prerequisite. We move up
to a chair when our relationship with a
partner already encompasses a flow of
significant projects that closely address
of the first chairs funded by Total?
Results and returns will differ by school
or institution and the chair’s field of
focus. However, we can make one
general observation that I would sum up
as follows: the more involved, present
and proactive we are, the more and
bigger the benefits for Total. It’s then up
to us to capture and build on them.
SEVEN EXAMPLES OF REPRESENTAT
The roughly 30 chairs we fund around the world address four of our major
education issues. Seven examples illustrate our process:
STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS
WITH KEY SCHOOLS AND
RESEARCH INSTITUTIONS
RESEARCH IN FIELDS
WITH A STRONG IMPACT
ON OUR CORE BUSINESS
> Contemporary Africa, MIT, USA
This chair provides an intellectual
foundation for enhancing understanding
of contemporary Africa and its
challenges, on the MIT campus.
The world-renowned professor who holds
the chair and his whole team offer
students first-rate instruction. Their
research furthers scientific knowledge
of the African continent.
> Sedimentology and Reservoir
Characterization,
IFP Energies nouvelles, France
The goal of this chair is to support and
develop teaching and research initiatives
on topics that seek to improve
understanding of the geometry and
distribution of sedimentary bodies, to
increase the success rate of reservoir
exploration and production.
> Energy, Carbon and Environmental
> Petroleum Engineering,
Science, ESPCI ParisTech, France
With its assertive focus on contemporary
energy issues, this chair aims to build
knowledge and develop original, viable,
eco-friendly technological solutions.
Total’s partnership with ESPCI ParisTech
also extends to several complementary
research projects in ESPCI ParisTech’s
different laboratories.
Imperial College, United Kingdom
Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) and fluid
mechanics in carbonate reservoirs are
key technical issues for Total. Two chairs
with their own dedicated teams deal
with geological fluid mechanics and EOR.
TIVE CHAIRS
CORPORATE SOCIAL
RESPONSIBILITY
DEVELOPMENT OF EDUCATIONAL
PROGRAMS IN STRATEGIC HOST
COUNTRIES
> HIV/AIDS Prevention Mechanisms,
Institut Pasteur, France
The creation of this chair, held by
Professor Françoise Barré-Sinoussi,
researcher at the Institut Pasteur and
winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine in
2008, provides a means to fund training
and research programs on ways to prevent
HIV infection. The chair will be established
at the Integrative Biology of Emerging
Diseases Center, now under construction
on the Pasteur Institute campus.
> Business Intelligence and the
Strategy of Business Organizations,
Université Paris Dauphine, France
This chair aims to make business
intelligence a cornerstone of management.
It will educate future managers about
business intelligence issues, develop
research on the strategic interactions
between management and business
intelligence, and help create a body
of knowledge and methods applicable
to business intelligence in organizations.
> Energy and Management,
HEC Paris School of Management,
France and Qatar
This chair is dedicated to studying issues
specific to the energy industry and to
expertise in management practice and
energy strategy. It focuses on education,
training and applied research, with a view
to supplying appropriate higher
education programs that meet the
challenges of the energy industry.
Contact us through
[email protected]
Total S.A.
Headquarters:
2, place Jean Millier, La Défense 6
92400 Courbevoie, France
Tel.: +33 (0)1 47 44 45 46
Share Capital: € 5,909,418,282.50
Registered in Nanterre: RCS 542 051 180
www.total.com
SG / DRH / FEU / EDU I February 2012 I Design: T2BH / Paris – tel. +33 (0)1 44 64 84 20 – © photo: Dreamstime, Fotolia,Thinkstock, Total, Veer.
Some of our Partners…