Underprivileged secondary school and college students tend to demonstrate limited ambitions with regards to further education and acquiring superior qualifications. In a partnership with higher education schools, such as AgroParisTech, encounters have been organised between high school students and higher education students acting as volunteering mentors.The aim is to present the high school students with the opportunity to explore new opportunities as well as to provide them with information about high profile careers and higher level training through various activities led by the higher education students, as well as through meetings, visits, weekends organised around a specific theme. Examples of such initiatives  show what benefits both the high school and higher education students can derive from them.

The quality of baked products is the complex, multidimensional result of a recipe, and a controlled heating process to produce the desired final properties such as taste, colour, shape, structure and density. The process of baking a sponge cake in a convective oven at different air temperatures (160-180-220 °C) leading to the same loss of mass was considered in this study. A special mould was used which allowed unidirectional heat transfer in the batter. Instrumentation was developed specifically for online measurement of weight loss, height variation and transient temperature profile and pressure in the product. This method was based on measuring heat fluxes (commercial sensors) to account for differences in product expansion and colour. In addition, measurement of height with a camera was coupled to the product mass to calculate changes in density over time. Finally, combining this information with more traditional measurements gave a better understanding of heat and mass transfer phenomena occurring during baking.

Food Studies represent the bases for multidisciplinary knowledge in food science, food engineering, food management, and how to use these scientific bases in a food worldwide context. Teaching and learning must be adapted to the new students, to the new tools, considering the cost of studies and equipment. The international availability of raw materials, the diversity of cultures, tastes and habits must be taken into account in the controlled food processes. Food engineering must be taught with reference to nutrition, health and security, but also to packaging, logistics, international rules, management of water, energy, wastes and cost. So how do we teach the present and future food engineers, to help them to acquire and build their own knowledge, to develop curiosity, an open mind and team work? How do we teach them to use, in an efficient way, computers, data bases, the internet, but also to learn and practice in the lab, on pilot equipment, in the plant during long internships? How do we give them the desire to conceive, to create, to manage, to communicate and to continue to learn during their professional life? International networks of universities, with associated people from research and industry, with teachers in elementary and secondary schools, with students, represent a main factor for reciprocal knowledge and exchanges, to preserve and use diversity to develop new ideas for teaching and learning. The objectives are to contribute to the development of our society, to feed in an harmonized way the world made of human beings, consumers, and workers in industry, research and universities.