Wednesday, September 2, 2009

A New Year Begins

Welcome back to the Chairman's Blog for the Department of Paper and Bioprocess Engineering at the State University of New York--College of Environmental Science and Forestry.  A lack of posts over the summer does not indicate a lack of activity, just a break from blogging.  I hope to keep you up to date on a weekly basis over the next academic year.

This year we are welcoming 26 new students to the program:  17 freshman and 9 transfer students.   We have students enrolling in all three of our programs:  Paper Engineering, Paper Science, and Bioprocessing Engineering.  The Bioprocess Engineering has become our most popular program in terms of new students, accounting for about 2/3 of the total incoming students.

As part of their introduction to SUNY-ESF and the PBE department, we held an orientation program for the new students which also included a number of tours.  As we did in years past, we toured RockTenn Solvay (formerly Solvay Paperboard) and the InBev Budweiser plant (Anhaeuser-Busch).  In addition, the students had the opportunity to visit some of the college properties to learn how the raw material for our industries is grown and harvested.

As their semester begins, these new students will not only begin their studies at SUNY-ESF, they will also be preparing for interviews for internships.   One of their first assignments is to begin to prepare a resume for this.

As we welcome the students to campus, we also congratulate those students receiving scholarships through the Syracuse Pulp and Paper Foundation, the ESF Foundation, and other funding sources.  Your continued support of these organizations helps these students to be here and to become the future engineers for the industry.

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New students in PBE preparing to depart on one of their tours as part of their orientation.

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