Every year at this time, we're delighted to welcome some 250 young, lively new members to our Ponts community, recruited by Ecole des Ponts from among the best candidates in France and abroad.

And it's true that these presentation amphitheatres at the Ecole are a joy! These young people are enthusiastic, smiling, and above all proud to have arrived at the beautiful and prestigious Ecole des Ponts. They are about to embark on three or four years of intense and exciting training. They'll set off to discover professional sectors and trades, test their interest through well-chosen internships, decide to specialize and make choices, take flight and be recruited...

The journey is serious and engaging, sometimes intimidating, rarely disappointing. Their choices will be all the more enlightened for having been guided and having been able to find advice and support from their elders, the graduates that we are, with our backgrounds, our professional situations and our networks. As alumni of Les Ponts, we have a crucial role to play.

So let's engage with them and welcome them as we should:

• by making surewe're contactable and well identified in the Ponts Alumni directory,
• by answering their questions about our professions and career paths,
• by opening up our address books,
• by sponsoring a student,
• taking part in student-graduate meetings,
• posting internship offers on the School's Career Center,
• and by embracing the association's raison d'être: "Mobilizing the international Ponts community to build the worlds of tomorrow".

Let's make them proud to belong to the community to which they now belong.

Happy back-to-school!