MAKE FOR SOCIETY - Roles and responsabilities

Students are usually the driving force behind MAKE projects. However, MAKE projects are strongly related to EPFL and its educational ecosystem, it is therefore crucial to support the students with a proper supervision to ensure:

• The quality of the learnings
• The students safety
• The reputation of EPFL

Three main roles are identified for running a MAKE for EDU project successfully at EPFL:

• A Professor (main applicant) - mandatory
• A coordinator (employee of the professor supervising the students on a regular basis) - facultative
• The student managers - mandatory

This document describes the different responsabilities associated with each of these roles

As the main applicant, the Professor is in charge of the project global supervision and have the operational responsibility for it. The Professor must ensure proper scientific endorsement, organization and logistics, legal issues, insurances issues, off-campus activities - or more generally that the project follow-up and the student’s safety - are handled properly.

The coordinator is seconding the Professor in charge of the project with a regular supervision of the student team. As the prototypes developped for MAKE for Society projects are likely to be less demanding in terms of logistics and infrastructures in comparison of the MAKE for EDU projects, the role of coordination can be handled by the Professor directly.

Every project is different and will have different issues that cannot always be anticipated. However, the following main tasks have been identified to be important in the supervision of MAKE for Society projects :

• Administrive and operational questions
  • Managing the fund for the projet and ordering consummables for students using catalyse,
  • Handling/Supporting students with operational/logistical questions (sponsoring, insurances, legal issues, off-campus activities logistic)
• Academic questions
  • Supporting students with technical expertise and coaching
• Supporting the students with a network of stakeholders outside EPFL (stakeholders in the society relevant to the project) is a plus

Most MAKE projects are defining different managerial roles to run their project (CEO, CFO, CTO etc..). The students have the responsability to run the project from A to Z, with the approval of their Professor and coordinator. They can be hold responsible if they lack transparency towards their supervisors. They are therefore required to be completely transparent with their supervisors, especially about important decisions (for example signing a new sponsoring contract, engaging in off-campus activities, ensuring students are insured properly etc..).

Every team is encouraged to think about their management and organizational structure (top-down with a hierarchy, flatter managerial structure with more consensual decision making etc..) but the MAKE committee is requesting at least two student leaders to sign the MAKE submission :

• The president of the association or CEO - main contact for the supervisors and the MAKE team
• The logistic manager to make the link with the makerspaces (storage etc..)