The university’s vocation is to give its young people the chance to tread a fertile ground in knowledge, a place of experimentation and progress in the service of tomorrow’s world. This is why it has always developed numerous tools to encourage the crossing of disciplines and the creation of new collaborations. More than ever, work-study programmes and continuing education are invaluable in finding one’s place in an agile society. Tomorrow’s major challenges will be at the confluence of technical, environmental and ethical issues and will therefore require innovative methodologies. Since 2012, transdisciplinary courses have been training students in the practice of ‘complex thinking’.
In 2020, AMU is creating the Mission Interdisciplinarité(s), initiating a cycle of interdisciplinary meetings « Tout un Monde en Mouvement », to further support this ambition and reveal its full interdisciplinary potential. A Mission in partnership with the Mucem, the CNRS, the IRD, local authorities and associations. Interdisciplinarity, which largely encourages risk-taking, is very often at the origin of major scientific and societal advances.

Since 2012, AMU has been a successive winner of programmes set up by the State to finance innovative and particularly promising investments in the region. With the support of its university foundation A*Midex, it has had many successes, including the creation of laboratories of excellence (LABEX) in 2012, two Convergences Institutes in 2017, three Hospital-University Health Research projects (RHU) in 2017 and two University Research Schools (EUR) in 2018. In 2021, it won the largest envelope of the « ExcellencEs » call for projects with a grant of 40 million euros to finance the Cisam+ project, which plans to open Innovation and Knowledge Cities on the Aix and Marseille campuses. Because it is important to place its youth at the heart of its policy, its latest structuring projects all have an impact on the student experience, whether it is a question of orientation, the way in which courses are given, courses (increasingly personalised) or the supervision of students. The aim is to facilitate their mobility in order to increase their international experience, multiply their opportunities to work with companies and… invent the professions of tomorrow! In 2022, AMU is launching its call for « White Research » projects with a budget of 10 million euros over four years. Open to the entire community, it aims to encourage creativity and daring and can receive emerging or exploratory scientific projects applied to all areas of the university.

Preparing young people for a world in transition means transmitting knowledge and skills, both disciplinary and transversal. Since the merger, Aix-Marseille University has strengthened its offer and the quality of its courses (through innovative and increasingly interactive teaching methods) to promote access to as many people as possible and to ensure the integration of its graduates into a changing world of work. And if in recent years it has placed interdisciplinarity, culture and creativity at the heart of its policy, it is because it knows that these values will help build the future! The challenge is to become a place of professional success and personal fulfilment, and to build a real social project together. And this success is largely based on the commitment of students, who are co-creators of this future. AMU must therefore be there to stimulate, support and promote the societal actions promoted by its students. So that today and for many years to come: knowledge progresses, reason is discussed and creativity flourishes!