Packaging Science and Materials

Packaging science and materials in a concentration that provides a deep dive into packaging materials, the manufacturing processes, and interaction between packaging materials and products.

Packaging materials include:

traditional plastics
sustainable bioplastics
corrugated
paper and paperboard
metals
glasses

The packaging program at Virginia Tech offers courses that thoroughly examine materials, machinery, and manufacturing process, and how those interact with goods in transit.

Successful completion of the courses in this area enables students to enter such business sectors as:

Packaging material companies (such as plastic chemical, paper, metal, and glass bases companies) as material scientist
Consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies as a packaging engineer
Packaging converters as production or packaging engineers

In this area, the average starting salary of a new graduate may be $65,000 to $85,000 based on the recent alumni salary survey.

Transfer Credits:

The Packaging Systems and Design degree offers a lot of flexibility to transfer students to tailor their education and also to allow them to graduate on time. Our 32 free elective credits allow you to transfer classes that you already took and count it towards your graduation progress. This allows many students to graduate on time even after changing their major.