Institut d'études politiques de Lyon
[3] It is located at the Centre Berthelot within the buildings of a former military health college and operates as an autonomous institution within the University of Lyon.
[4] The ELSP was established as a private institution in 1872 by Emile Boutmy (along with Hippolyte Taine, Ernest Renan, Albert Sorel, Paul Leroy-Beaulieu and René Stourm), was dissolved in 1945 following a demand coming primarily from the French Communist Party, the strongest political force at that time, as well as other political figures not affiliated with it, such as Jean-Pierre Cot[8] and André Philip.
[9] The ELSP, known then as Sciences Po, was indeed considered as an institution providing the sole Parisian bourgeoisie with a quasi-monopoly over access to the most prestigious positions in the French civil service (the Grands corps de l'Etat or high administrative bodies).
[10] More to the point, the ELSP was discredited for having trained many senior civil servants who quickly supported and were actually the backbone of the Vichy France from July 1940 to August 1944.
In order to democratize and rationalize access to the senior civil service, the "National School of Administration" (École nationale d'administration) was created on the basis of a project developed by Michel Debré and Emmanuel Monick.
They are quite distinct from the other traditional elite French schools, in particular the highly specialized Grandes Ecoles in business and engineering, given their multi-disciplinary approach to teaching.
All students at the IEPs study a compulsory curriculum that is highly practical and multidisciplinary during its first years and focuses on the full range of the social sciences and humanities.
According to article 2 of an 18 December 1989 decree[17] on the status of the instituts d'études politiques, their mission is to contribute to the training of higher civil servants as well as executives in the public, para-public and private sectors, notably in the state and decentralized communities as well as to develop the research in political and administrative sciences.
[citation needed] It is located at the Centre Berthelot within the buildings of a former military health college, which was used during World War II by the then Lyon's Gestapo chief, Klaus Barbie, to torture resistance members, including Jean Moulin.
The same buildings were also used by the Ecole Polytechnique from 1940 to 1943 after the school decided to relocate to Lyon (then in the free zone) from its headquarters in the occupied Paris.
[19][20] Sciences Po Lyon has established a satellite campus for a curriculum specialized in Russian affairs in Saint-Etienne at Jean Monnet University.
[24][25] Accordingly, approximately 55% of the students at Sciences Po hold a French Baccalaureate (equivalent to an A level), predominantly scientific or economic, with a Summa Cum Laude distinction.
Additionally, students need to study at least two foreign languages, such as English, German, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Italian, or Russian.
As such, ESoPA has partnered with Paris Dauphine University[67][68][69][70] In its report [71] in December 2010, AERES, the French Evaluation Agency on Research and Higher Education, praised the excellency of the academic training offered by Sciences Po Lyon.
[74] HCERES has also praised the excellent network of Sciences Po Lyon's international partners, notably those in the United States.
Sciences Po Lyon students participate in the "Crit", a sporting event between all the Institutes of Political Studies in France.
The "Bureau des sports" (BDE) manages the school's athletic life and organizes the "Crit", in cooperation with the BDEs of the other IEPs.
More recently, Sciences Po has established a research group named Triangle, in joint cooperation with the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (French National Centre for Scientific Research), the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon (ENS) and Lyon Lumiere University.
