NPT2 Hosts Regional Summer Student/Faculty Institutes
Four regional community colleges across the nation recently hosted National Network for Pulp & Paper Technology's (NPT2) Student/Faculty Summer Institutes. The annual institutes provide a forum for high school students, high school advisers and college educators to gather. While there, they explore the products, processes and career opportunities in the pulp and paper industry.
The institutes are held in Maine, Washington, Alabama and Minnesota. They provide participants with hands-on exposure to pulp and paper processes and include visits to local pulp and paper production facilities. Many students visited the University of Maine's campus to observe ongoing research in the area of cellulosic biofuels.
"I realized it involved more technological skill than I initially believed," said a student participant from Itasca Community College in Grand Rapids, MI. "It made me want to consider working in the paper industry."
Each institute is designed to enable participants to achieve several goals:
• To describe key processes including pulping, papermaking, and paper recycling;
• To demonstrate scientific principles related to pulp and paper technology;
• To develop methods to incorporate pulp and paper concepts and learning materials into the classroom; and
• To provide information about career opportunities in the industry.
About NPT2
The Network was created to provide the pulp and paper sector of the US forest products industry with a Technologically Advanced Workforce (TAW). NPT2 achieves this goal by offering exciting and effective education and training. The Network is an alliance of community colleges, universities, industry partners and the National Science Foundation. NPT2 is a part of the TAW platform supported by TAPPI, the leading association for the worldwide pulp, paper, packaging, and converting industries and the American Forest and Paper Association's special project group, Agenda 2020.
More information is available from T. J. Murphy, Executive Director, NPT2, tjmurphy@ascc.edu, +1 (334) 637-3193. Visit www.npt2.org.
TAPPI
http://www.tappi.org/