On October 10th 2024, ENS Foundation director Caroline Guény-Mentré and Frédéric Worms, director of the École normale supérieure, welcomed scholarship holders who have joined the school for the start of the 2024/2025 academic year, as well as donors, for a social evening in the Salon de la Direction.
The event was an opportunity to showcase the variety of backgrounds and experiences of the new students, and to build bridges with the archicubes and companies that support the École’s scholarship programmes, including MGEN, Squarepoint, Citadel and AXA.
The Foundation’s many scholarship programmes are at the heart of the École normale supérieure’s inclusion and diversity plan, and every year they help to attract the best talents and diversify recruitment in the school’s departments, particularly the scientific departments.
Jérome Lebuchoux (S 91), alumnus and representative of Citadel, sponsor of the Women and Sciences scholarship programme, also took the floor and spoke of the need for a collective commitment to greater diversity at the school, and in particular to parity in science admissions.
Since the launch of the Women and Sciences scholarship programme in 2023, applications from women to the Concours Normalien Etudiant (CNE) in science departments have increased by 50%. For the last two academic years, the physics department reached parity in its admissions for the first time in its history. This year, the mathematics department also admitted its highest number of women ever.