Packaging Design and Business Focus

Courses in this track lead the students to understand a system that includes the creation of products, structural design for security and protection in transit, and graphical design elements for communication with consumers. The packaging program at Virginia Tech offers a series of courses covering fundamental design principles all the way to an advanced experiential design studio course. To meet with the societal demands for sustainability,  each course focuses on the connections of individual packaging components with each other.

Course projects are hands-on experiences focused on solving industrial packaging problems and are often sponsored by major packaging companies.

Virginia Tech packaging graduates have been successful within a broad base of business sectors as packaging structural engineers or graphic designers. Employers include companies providing consumer packaged goods, packaging converters, and packaging suppliers.

In this area, the average starting salaries of new graduates are $60,000 to $65,000, based on the recent alumni salary survey.

Transfer Credits:

The Packaging Systems and Design degree offers a lot of flexibility for transfer students to personalize their education while also allowing them to graduate on time. Our 32 free elective credits allow students to transfer in classes that they have already taken and count them towards their graduation progress. This allows many students to graduate on time even after changing their major.

Example courses:

• SBIO 2104 – Principles of Packaging
• SBIO 2004 – Computer-Aided Design in Packaging
• SBIO 2214 – Design Fundamentals of Packaging
• SBIO 3104 – Packaging Design Applications
• SBIO 3244 – Packaging Machinery and Production Systems
• SBIO 3264 – Packaging Supply Chains
• SBIO 4054 – Packaging Systems Design Practicum