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Hi I’m Ellen Manno and I'm the Undergraduate Program
Coordinator in the school of Forest Resources here
at Penn State. Were one of the units in the college of Ag Sciences
and we would like to tell you a little bit about our Wood Products program
today. Wood, as you know, is a
renewable natural resource. There are a
variety of products made from wood, many of which you are familiar
with: paper, packaging, furniture,
cabinets, even chemicals and fuels.
So you might be interested in studying wood
products if you have a variety of interests whether it's
business and marketing end of things or the processing and
manufacturing end. So if you're interested in
business and marketing you'll learn a little bit about wood
and wood properties but you'll focus more on the elements such as
sales, global competition, customer
satisfaction, even green marketing.
So communication skills are really important. And people
skills because you're going to be marketing the wood
products. So what
does a wood product business and marketing graduate do?
Well often they start out in sales positions and they
might advance managing national or
district accounts. You might also
work in retail management such as the home
improvement center industry. If you have an interest
more in the analytic side of things, you might be a market research
analyst or a product marketing manager.
So students who are more
interested in processing and manufacturing will focus
much more on learning about the chemical, physical, and mechanical
properties of wood. So basic math
and science skills are really important as well as problem
solving skills on the technical end of things.
Wood products, Processing and Manufacturing
graduates, find jobs primarily in
either industry academia or the government.
The technical
service end of things really focus on the different
sectors of the wood products industry whether it's, again, the
paper manufacturing, the
furniture and cabinets, but also things like
adhesives and bioenergy, for example,
are new and upcoming areas.
The employments for our Wood Products graduates are excellent.
Surveys continually show that we have many more job
opportunities than there are trained graduates to fill them. So that's
really good news for you if you’re interested in wood products.
Graduates can choose
to work for a global firm so you can go anywhere internationally
but if you want to stay in an area there's also lots
of opportunities with local manufacturing firms. So that's
your choice of whether you want to be in a rural
area or an urban area or travel
internationally or stay nearby home.
We're very proud of our Wood Products program here at Penn State, it's
definitely nationally recognized that also accredited by the
Society of Wood Science and
Technology. So if you have any further questions I'd be happy
to talk with you about them so
please give me a call.