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About

Founded in 1990, the Alumni Association of the ESBS (AAE) drives the Alumni Network of our biotechnology engineering school.

The office is located in the buildings of the ESBS at the Pôle Api in Illkirch, a suburb of Strasbourg, France. The association is legally registered under the name “Association des Anciens Elèves de l’Ecole Supérieure de Biotechnologie de Strasbourg – ESBS Alumni ” at the local court of Illkirch, France. SIRET: 890 209 133 00010.

You can see a quick summary of the association on the powerpoint, as well as the statutes that precisely describes the AAE, on this page.

If you are interested in understanding the internal structure of the AAE, go there.

The Alumni Network

This network is made of all former students of the schools, graduated or not, and regardless of the curriculum followed at the ESBS. This includes the former students of the biotech and ChemBioTech engineering degrees, as well as the ESBS master degrees, the pharmaceutical degree, and temporary students in the school (e.g. Erasmus, international exchanges).

Moreover, the association welcomes promotion godfathers and godmothers, and workers or former workers of the ESBS (e.g. professors, researchers, technicians, administrative staff).

The Alumni Network members:

  • are involved in all fields of biotechnology and life sciences.
  • work in academia, in industry, for legal or state organizations and many others.
  • fulfill a diverse variety of roles (e.g. scientists, managers, engineers, consultants).

We refer to them as “alumni” in our communications. All these people can subscribe to the AAE and become members of the association.

The ChemBioTech (CBT) alumni are of particular interest for the AAE as they are both ESBS and ECPM alumni, which is the chemistry engineering school in Strasbourg. To take into account this exceptional feature, the AAE has led the signing of a partnership between us and the ECPM alumni association, the AICS. It enables both associations to make joint activities for the ChemBioTech community and, especially, to allow the CBT alumni to subscribe to both the AAE and the AICS at the same time with a major discount on the membership fee (18.50€ instead of 57.50€). You can find the partnership agreement on this page.

Missions

In this context, the AAE has 3 main objectives:

  • Develop the alumni professional network;
  • Strengthen friendship and solidarity among the alumni social network;
  • Support the students and the school.

To achieve them, the association organizes various events. First, every 2 years since 2005, the Alumni Day enables people to make professional connections. Not only do these events offer a huge variety of career-related information, presented in numerous talks and workshops, they also provide room to exchange ideas, opinions and knowledge as well as to refresh old friendships – and make new ones.

Between Alumni Day, the AAE gathers all its members and beyond for the General Assembly to discuss the life of the Association and get the latest updates on the network and the ESBS. This is a good excuse to organize a “global” stammtisch the same day. A stammtisch is a lunch, a dinner or a party in a bar organized by alumni. “Local” stammtisch develop the local alumni network in a given city. Thereby, all alumni are gathered to a global stammtisch once a year.

Besides, the AAE provides 5 main services that are centralized on this website (esbsalumni.com): the jobs portal, the alumni directory, the newsletters, the mentoring program and the grants.

Yet, the AAE must not be seen as a service-offering entity. We take part in the AAE to help each other and develop friendship, not to be purely benevolent or to exchange a product for money. Therefore, to take an example, asking what one would get to their own individual benefit by being a member or by volunteering is not the appropriate mindset to have here. On the contrary, we do that to support and enjoy each other.

For the jobs portal, volunteers collect job offers which are forwarded by alumni, the school or companies. Any user registered on the website can post a job offer and access to all of them. Alumni and students can register by giving, if they wish, their professional information and personal contact. This process grows the Alumni Directory, that any user can access to, and enables them to keep in touch with the AAE communications. The main communication is the newsletter that is published by volunteers every 4 months. It mostly summarizes the news about the Alumni Network.

Reciprocal solidarity is a core value for the AAE. We first materialize it by creating professional relationships between the students, who will be the future alumni, and the Alumni Network, through the mentoring program. Students and alumni register to this program and then, the AAE makes pairs. The goal is to develop long-term reciprocal relationships. In addition, thanks to its members’ donations, the association provides grants to students and alumni with economic difficulties. The granting process is transparent and objective as much as possible.

Finally, the AAE meets its third objective by taking part in the ESBS life. For example, the AAE makes a CV workshop, alumni give talks for the students and the association brings advice to the school management. It can be noted that the AAE can vote at the ESBS Administrative Council.

You can find the list of events here and the current services there.

Ressources

To drive the network, the AAE first and mostly requires volunteers to lead and work on the projects. Volunteers are regrouped in the Board of Directors. We aim to be as horizontal as possible and enable personal initiatives. You can learn more about the AAE structure on this page and discover the current team here.

Second, subscriptions and donations are essential to enable the association to organize events and offer services. They must be seen as mostly a support to the AAE, and of course, a way to continue to be part of the “BS family”. To simplify, the subscriptions especially fund the structural and investment expenses, while the donations especially fund the grants. You can subscribe here.

Sponsoring is critical to organize the events and build a financial bed against the risks, yet companies cannot set the association policy. In general, independence is always a critical criterion. Sponsoring or grants from public institutions are not wanted.

Finally, the ESBS indirectly, but notably, supports the association activities by allowing its actions in the school and the use of the building, while student associations are important for the AAE as they enable a direct contact with the students. We all want the success of the ESBS students and we work together toward this goal.

The list of partners is here.

The AAE thanks and acknowledges all contributors to the Alumni Network: volunteers, donors and our partners.