ATLANTA — Four college students have received scholarships from the Society of Plastics Engineers' Thermoforming Division, SPE officials announced at the Thermoforming Conference in Atlanta.
The winners are:
Zachary Travis, a senior at Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg, Kan., earned the Segen Griep Memorial Scholarship. Travis is pursuing a bachelor's degree in engineering technology, with an emphasis on plastics engineering technology. He is the vice president of Pittsburg State's SPE chapter.
Travis plans to work in the plastics industry.
Samuel Moore, a senior at Pittsburg State majoring in plastics engineering technology, won a Thermoforming Division Memorial Scholarship. He is active in the SPE student chapter. Moore has worked at three plastics companies: Buckhorn Inc. and Polyfab Plastics, and it currently working at Becton Dickinson and Co. in Nebraska.
Charlotte Seeley, a senior at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Mich., earned a Thermoforming Division Memorial Scholarship. She is studying packaging with a minor in graphic design.
Seeley has been interning for the past six months at Kimberly-Clark Corp., where she has worked with a wide variety of materials, including polyolefins. She supported a trial involving thermoformed nitrogen-flushed trays.
Seeley, who also has interned at Colgate-Palmolive Co., wants to develop sustainable packages that are cost-effective enough to be used by global consumer products companies.
Samuel Heasley, a plastics engineering technology student at Penn State Behrend in Erie, Pa., picked up the Bill Benjamin Memorial Scholarship. Heasley serves as secretary of the college's Plastics Engineering Club, where he volunteers with events such as Youth Explorers and the GE STEM program.
He also has taken advanced of Penn State's cooperative education program, to work on new product development and validation at Husky Injection Molding Systems Ltd. and Apple Inc.
Heasley has conducted research on thermoforming processing parameters and how they impact dullness and webbing in formed parts.
Upon graduation, he will seek a job as a tooling engineer.