Visual Communication Technology’s packaging and display lab turns four this year.

The lab has provided students with unique skills in the industry, making them more marketable to employers when they graduate, Chair and Associate Professor Donna Trautman said.

Trautman and senior VCT lecturer Laney Fugett wrote and received a grant of $160,000 from the International Corrugated and Packaging Foundation for software and a flatbed cad sample table related to the packaging industry.

After receiving the grant, Associate Professor Charles Spontelli worked with EFI and VuTek to acquire the printer for the lab.

The grant they received from ICPF was enhanced by ESKO who donated software, maintenance, and upgrades to the lab, making the lab worth over $4.5 million.

The University helped install the equipment into the lab, along with the electrical service, the exhaust system and the

compressor.

All of the equipment in the lab was donated, Spontelli said.

“Since that lab was installed, in the past four years, VCT has not spent a penny on running it,” Spontelli said. “It has all been provided by those companies.”

Companies donate to the lab because it educates students that they will one day hire, Trautman said.

“We are the only program in Ohio and one of the very unique ones in the country that have a lab which combines that cutting table and the printer and our software and facilities,” Trautman said. “They want to hire our students.”

Spontelli said the packaging industry in Ohio is a billion dollar industry.

“They were getting all of their students from other states and transplanting them to companies in Ohio,” Trautman said. “They really reached out to us and want to encourage us to continue.”

Spontelli said ESKO did not know about the University’s VCT program until the packaging and display lab project started.

Since hearing about the lab, one of the vice presidents visited and donated the company’s entire software library to the program.

“I was like a kid in a candy store when I got that email,” Spontelli said.

VCT alumna and current VCT visual media coordinator Amanda Cutcher completed a co-op with the department in spring and summer 2014.

She said she learned how to use the printer and the software during that time.

At first, Cutcher said the lab was intimidating, but now she said she views it as “a walk in the park.”

“I knew big printers were out there and in the industry, but I had never used them,” Cutcher said. “I found it interesting to see how it works.”

She said she has given tours of the lab to prospective and first year students and the first thing they always say

is, “Wow.”