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Career selling collides with lack of organization

The June '99 Packaging Education Summit was so rich in content and ideas that all year could be spent examining proposals that might have merit. Last month, individuals in our packaging community were encouraged to look at ways they could improve education in their local communities.

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In this column, another concept will be examined--the need to "sell" a packaging career to students--both from the opportunity side and also from the perspective of the obstacles.

In their summations of the discussions of groups of vocational schools and universities, Dr. Laura Caldwell of the University of Cincinnati and Kevin Lipsky of Indianhead Technical Institute agreed on a lot of suggestions. Perhaps the strongest area of agreement was in promoting more industry cooperation to make students aware of the potential careers in packaging.

They're not alone. The Packaging Education Forum's 1998 survey of program directors at universities with packaging courses showed that attracting new students was a major priority, second only to the need for lab equipment. The good news, as related by PEF secretary Bill Pflaum at the Education Summit, is that there are an increasing number of universities offering packaging courses, the number of courses is growing and so is the number of students.

Pflaum's report shows more than 1걶 students declared themselves "packaging" students, a gain of about 10% from '97. This doesn't include another 1껋 students who were taking courses in packaging, but didn't identify themselves as "packaging" students. Faculty in packaging is up to 70, from 51 in '97, and the number of courses considered to be packaging rose from 115 in '97 to 163 in '98.

No question this is a strong growth picture. Yet the premise behind the Education Summit is that the supply of qualified people for packaging positions is insufficient. Dr. Caldwell, for example, said that mechanical engineering grads at the University of Cincinnati not only have 100% placement, but they also start their careers with the third-highest level starting salary of all engineering grads at U. of C. In fact, she said, most of the grads with packaging course experience are so sought after they usually have a selection of job offers to consider.

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