Could you explain – in just a few words – what the PEC (Packaging & Conditioning) technological degree is?
The PEC is a Packaging course in 2 years, leading to 2 options:
- The “short studies” option: after 2 years, students have the possibility of getting in a professional degree – especially the CDIE (Conception, Industrial design & Packaging) one – which is a 3rd year mainly dedicated to the creation of volumes and graphic design specially adapted to a project’s packaging and production.
- The “long studies” option: after 2 years, students can decide to continue with a 3-years course if they wish to get into the Packaging department of an engineering school.
A close relationship has existed for a long time between your Institute and our Council. In your opinion, what are the educational interests of the CNE’s missions and documents?
In the educational programme of our CDIE’s students, we have got used to including the CNE’s “Emballé 3.0” Contest. Indeed, the contest has – for this particular course – a great interest, since every year it offers different subjects and missions, and it deals with prospective issues. Thanks to this, our students can create and bring pragmatic solutions to simple problematics based on common sense and on the observation of the products and their use. It accustoms them to search for the information they need – especially in the CNE’s publications and documents. Furthermore, the CNE’s tools enable our students to integrate, in the packaging’s design, some restrictions linked to environment management, ergonomics, and sustainability.
Students can then fully integrate the concept of circular economy, and use it to extend material & products flows, throughout the pack’s lifecycle.
How can this be seen in your students’ daily education?
This contest is an interesting tool, because it is initiated neither by an industrial company nor by a manufacturer. Our students are allowed to be more creative; they can use materials of all sorts and plan their projects further on, since there are no imperatives to achieve it immediately. This does not restrain their researches, and thus they are able to project more positively in the future and to make suggestions that are more advanced and creatively-conducive.
Your Institute has been faithful to the “Emballé 3.0” Contest since the beginning. Could you shortly describe the interest that both your students and the teaching staff have for it?
This CNE-initiated Contest is now well known among our students. They eagerly wait for it, because it is different from their other projects. The interesting thing is that the Contest requires an actual proposition, but is still based on intention. Thus, it is less demanding when it comes to making models, prototypes and real products. These conditions allow our students to imagine solutions without being restricted by imperatives of real production, and they can project into future developments.
This contest’s frame – following the CNE’s recommendations – directs the projects so they are consistent with eco-design. It demands a greater attention to the respect for nature, and to include concepts such as carbon footprint, practicality, use function, and what the consumer get from it. This helps our students realizing how necessary it is to include all these parameters. It allows them to take into account all these notions, and to apply them afterwards in other projects. On the long run, they become part of their priorities as packaging designers.
The Reims IUT has finally won the “Emballé 3.0” Contest in February 2017. Does this result encourage you to get even more involved with the CNE?
Of course. The Packaging department and its students had often been among the finalists, but had never won until now. They will be very eager to take up the challenge and repeat this win.
In 2017, the Contest has been modified thanks to the input of the partner schools. As the 2017 Gold Winner, do you have any suggestions to improve this Contest and its aims even more?
We think the changes made in 2017 – especially the use of a mentoring system – have brought a lot when it comes to proximity between the CNE and the students.
Having someone who challenges the project and brings a new vision about it, before producing the last proposition, allows the students to analyse their project’s strengths and weaknesses; and thus to turn it into something even more relevant.
Beyond the Contest in itself, do you have any suggestions to strengthen the links between the CNE and education?
As far as we are concerned, it would be interesting for the Contest to be integrated earlier in our schedule. That way, the students would be able to assimilate the legitimacy of the CNE’s values, and thus apply them more quickly to the different projects offered.
