The lowly package has a big job to do. It has to showcase and
sell the product it encloses. It has to protect its content from all kinds of
threats: heat, moisture, being dropped or shaken. It has to assure the customer that the goods
inside haven’t been tampered with and are safe to consume.
And in recent years, it has faced a new test: to be “green.”
When a consumer pitches an empty package into the trash or recycling, it has to
cause little harm to the environment.
Designing packages that fulfill these oft-conflicting roles is
a job for Rutgers engineers.
Rutgers hosts one of the country’s dozen or so university
packaging research and education programs, and has been doing so since 1965. Enrollment
and investment in the program, however, had slipped in recent years. Not
acceptable, say New Jersey’s business leaders, who need new talent to meet
packaging challenges that the state’s pharmaceutical, cosmetic, food product, and
other industries face.
Fortunately, business leaders and School of Engineering administrators
have taken steps to revitalize the university’s packaging program. A group of 50
businesses has raised $110,000 in funding for the program, and more than 30
undergraduates this year have declared packaging engineering as their major. Last
year, the program had only three undergraduate students.
“There is no recession in packaging,” said Hae Chang Gea,
professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and the program’s new
director. “Companies are begging us to produce more engineers who are trained
in packaging – either in designing packages or the machines that produce them.”
The program’s rebirth started in February when School of
Engineering Dean Thomas Farris appointed Gea, a faculty member for 18 years, to
become its director. One of the first things Gea did was to reach out to the
program’s alumni, many of whom hold industry leadership positions.
“I’ve never seen alumni with this amount of passion,” he
said.
Scott Widro, left, of Gurwitch Products shows his company's cosmetics to Charles Chang, president of Topline Products and chair of the packaging engineering program's industrial advisory board.
One recent graduate, Ivy Wu, started working at Bayer
HealthCare in Morris Township in May.
“It’s the job I was looking for,” she said, noting that she
works with bottle sealing and blister packaging machines. “At Bayer, I saw how
the machines worked. But I learned the fundamentals at Rutgers.”
Her manager, Guido Schmitz, who also hired alumna Regina
Deluca last spring, hopes Bayer’s support gives him a line on up-and-coming
Rutgers students. “I want to see in the early stages what students can do with
us,” he said. “Whatever we have to do to make the program state-of-the-art, I
will support.”
Michael Lee, now a junior, changed his major from electrical
and computer engineering last year. Just back from a packaging industry trade
show in Las Vegas, he said his “eyes were opened” to the range of
opportunities. “Packaging engineering takes its contents from each type of
engineering,” he said.
Gea agrees, but doesn’t stop there. “I’d like to work across
the university, with pharmacy, food science, law, and business, and even art.”
At a fundraising dinner in October sponsored by the
program’s industrial advisory board, corporate members set up and staffed
displays of their products. Students had the opportunity to ask industry
representatives about the nature of their businesses, and the reps had the
chance to establish relationships that could lead to employment opportunities.
“There are more requests for co-op students, summer interns,
and employees than Rutgers can offer, but that will change as Rutgers enrolls
more students,” said Charles Chang, president of Topline Products in Wayne and
chair of the advisory board. His company, which makes packaging for the
cosmetics industry, has contributed $50,000 annually to the program for the
past three years. Chang is a 1975 graduate of the packaging engineering
program.
The program began with corporate support more than 45 years ago
– a gift from Ira S. Gottscho, who moved his family’s packaging machinery
business from Brooklyn to New Jersey and saw a need to train packaging
specialists to serve area industries. In 2007, his widow and successor as CEO,
the late Eva Gottscho, pledged $1.5 million to equip a packaging engineering
laboratory in the school’s new Biomedical Engineering Building.
Students enrolled in their second and third years in the
program received a special gift funded by the board – an Apple iPad tablet
computer that will be the basis for instructional materials in the coming year.
Gea explains that students will use these as more than simply e-readers. Professors
will develop course materials that are interactive, enabling students to change
package designs, shapes, or colors within in their texts.
