Allied Organizations
Though the teaching of college classes and labs have been impacted due to the pandemic, the International Corrugated Packaging Foundation (ICPF) has continued its ongoing University Awards Program to provide equipment and grants to its partner universities in preparation for their return to 100% “on campus” programming.
As earlier reported, ICPF partnership award agreements with universities have been negotiated and executed for the awards that were scheduled for 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021. Last semester, ICPF purchased and placed a TMI Medium Fluter and accessories at NC State (where ICPF placed a CAD table in the previous year), and a Sommerville Screen Disintegrator was purchased and placed at Cal Poly. During this past semester, Indiana State also qualified for the third and annual installment of an ICPF grant to enable the hiring of a graduate assistant to assist in regularly marketing the packaging program to Indiana high school and ISU college students, the development of packaging sales certification curriculum, the launch of a corrugated packaging structural and graphic design certificate, and the expansion of corrugated packaging courses in design and materials being taught to freshman sophomore and junior students. Indiana State University (ISU) fully credits ICPF’s three annual university awards for its success in growing its packaging engineering technology enrollment by a substantial 24%.
Equipment and financial awards are subject to each university meeting annual goals that are tracked by both ICPF and ICPF’s auditor. We currently are scheduling the purchase and placement of up to 20 computers and 20 to create the new design lab at University of Texas Arlington (where ICPF placed a large-scale digital printer in 2019) and the placement of a large-scale flatbed printer and 53 seats of Impact design software in Virginia Tech’s packaging program.
To date, recently approved equipment and awards have been made to Rutgers, Western Michigan University, Millersville University, Indiana State, North Carolina State, University of Texas - Arlington, Cal Poly, Virginia Tech, and Lewis Clark State College. Some of the elements of the new initiatives enabled by the ICPF over the past three years awards include creation of three new corrugated packaging design labs; funding for additional corrugated faculty at four universities; intro of sales & business into packaging courses; launch of corrugated packaging curricula in two paper science engineering programs; creation of a program to promote corrugated packaging to attract high school students into university packaging programs; introduction of digital printing on two campuses; expansion of a packaging design program to include evaluation and testing of corrugated materials; creation of new packaging degrees and certification programs for undergraduate students; and expansions of existing corrugated testing and packaging design labs. By the end of this year, ICPF will have provided over $13 million in total donations of equipment and grants to universities, and millions more in design software.