Iordanis Samlidis is a mechanical engineer from Katerini, a town in the province of Thessaloniki, in Greece. Today, not yet 30 years old, he heads a company of 34 employees.
He has followed the growth of the company since its very beginning and in the course of a very small period of time, has led it to consolidate itself on the national and international markets. To attain this important result, Samlidis has invested in himself and in his professional preparation, leaving his country for a year and moving to Italy to follow – after a degree obtained with flying colors at the University of Thessaloniki – a Master Course at the University of Pisa in “Paper & board production and management of the production system”.
Perini Journal
In just one year he learned Italian, followed the courses and obtained his Master summa cum laude. Knowing that there existed concrete possibilities of work in the paper and cardboard industry in his native country, he focused on the specialized training that this post-university-degree course guarantees. Recognized by Assocarta(1) as the top national level training course in the paper field, and through the contribution of scholarships from Gifco (Corrugated Board Manufacturers Group), the Master course is being held for the fifth consecutive year. Besides exceptional personalities such as Samlidis, all the students that have taken the course found full employment also through the initiative. Among its former students are laboratory managers, plant directors, technical-sales managers and directors who are involved in the building or renovation of paper & board companies abroad.
SPLIT IN TWO SEMESTERS, A “HOMOGENIZING” ONE AND A SPECIALIZING semester, and directed at people having university degrees in engineering, chemistry or physics, one of the strong points of the Master course is the fact that classes are held by company managers, who can transfer to the students direct knowledge of the working world and supply updated information on technologies and on the markets. To integrate the classroom aspect of the course, a final three-month internship is organized at national or international companies or research centers. Among those organized for 2007, students were able to follow the implementation of a machine at a paper mill in Romania and conclude some research projects in Germany.
The director of the Master course, Alessandro Paglianti, Professor at the University of Bologna (that collaborates with the University of Pisa for the didactic aspect) speaks enthusiastically about the course.
“THIS MASTER – SAYS PROFESSOR PAGLIANTI – THAT ATTRIBUTES 70 UNIVERSITY CREDITS TO STUDENTS – HAS SUCCEEDED IN A FEW YEARS IN SUPPLYING OPTIMAL TRAINING, guaranteed by the mandatory exams that students must pass for every subject studied and the final analysis or research project they must complete. Several theses have already been published and are presently the object of debate sessions or congresses. It is today common knowledge that, in order to win the challenge posed by market globalization, training of highly qualified personnel is required: people who can quickly become part of the production cycle. For this reason, at the end of the Master training course, a highly qualified figure is offered to the market, one that is characterized both by specific knowledge and a flexible, systematic mentality deriving from the strong integration of technological culture with the acquired economic and organizational competences”.
To accompany the regular course offering (which does not require mandatory attendance and can also be taken by working students) specialized training seminars on topics of specific interest for the paper & board field are organized.
TO FURTHER CONSOLIDATE THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE WORLD OF TRAINING AND THE INDUSTRIAL WORLD, during the second semester, classroom doors are opened also for company directors, employees and/or collaborators who have not signed up for the course, but who may be interested in specific individual aspects or lessons held during the course. The organizational part, catered to by Celsius (Company in Lucca for University Training and Studies) on behalf of the University of Pisa, establishes that the lessons be held in Lucca within the city’s university district that already hosts research doctorates. The Master is in fact the result of a strong synergy between University, the entrepreneurial world and the territory, since the companies working in the paper & board production fields and the institutions support the initiative and share its international breadth.
As a further training instrument on the activity of the course, an Internet site has been created: www.mastercartalucca.it that also constitutes a valid instrument for meeting and sharing opinions on the various initiatives that rotate around the field of paper. Here, it is possible to find the application forms necessary to sign up for the course which interested people can generally follow from the month of August to mid-October of every year.