“MSU established the packaging education program in 1952, the first university-based packaging education program in the world,” Susan Selke, professor of packaging at MSU and director of MSU’s School of Packaging tells Michigan State University President Lou Anna K. Simon and Spartans Athletic Director Mark Hollis. “So MSU can lay claim to establishing packaging as an academic discipline.
“We feel a responsibility to continue to advance the science and technology of packaging.”
Selke says the exponential increase in the use of plastic in packaging has been, and continues to be, the biggest leap in the industry’s history.
“I’ve been on the faculty at MSU for 32 years. When I started, plastic was the fastest growing packaging material; plastics are still the fastest growing packaging material.”
She says there are now more ways to make packaging that does more with less.
“We have to remember that the fundamental role of packaging is to get us the products we want.”
She adds that most people don’t even notice the packaging unless it fails and that improving the sustainability of packaging is the next frontier. Many packages today perform better even though they’re made of less material. Modern packaging is keeping our food safer for a longer period of time, too.
“But we always have to keep in mind that if the package doesn’t do its job and the product fails, then the whole system is much worse off. It’s often useful to invest a little more in the package so that the product survives.”
Students gravitate toward a packaging major because it’s science applied in very practical ways with a nice mix of art in the form or design thrown in. The school’s job placement rate for its graduates is consistently over 90 percent with salary levels comparable to engineering.
MSU packaging graduates, says Selke, “make real contributions to the industry and the growth of knowledge in the field and help us get all things we like to have as we live our daily lives.”
Intelligent packages that can sense things and communicate to you about them is the next frontier for packaging.