On 17-20 March 2019, America‘s TAGA (Technical Association of the Graphic Arts) held its 71st Annual Technical Conference in Minneapolis (MN, United States). Like every year, the results of the contest that sees various student chapters compete were announced at the event. For the third year running, the jury awarded the Special Recognition Prize – Student Publication, Technical Writing to the French Chapter (Europe‘s only student chapter). This rewards the accuracy and pertinence of the scientific and technical research presented in a booklet published for the occasion, as well as the quality and clarity of the writing.
The TAGA student chapter, which is made up entirely of female student apprentices, gave us their thoughts.
Who are the members of the TAGA Chapter for 2018-2019?
- Julie Le Méteil (3A CFA) – Chair
- Adeline Pongerard (3A CFA) – Treasurer
- Clémence Guillot (3A CFA)
- Élisa Boutonnet (3A CFA)
- Edmée Gonzales Micheli (3A CFA)
The five members of the association travelled to Minneapolis accompanied by Bernard Pineaux, Deputy Director of Grenoble INP-Pagora.
The TAGA jury rewarded you for the contents of your booklet. What topics did it cover and what form did it take?
Our booklet, which secured us the Technical Writing Prize for the third year in a row, is available in digital form from the TAGA French Chapter website (PDF or FlipBook). The printed version was produced at Grenoble INP-Pagora. Huge thanks must go to Lionel Chagas for printing it and Mikaël Party for cutting the cover. It was bound by hand to ensure that its appearance would be unique. The booklet contains five articles based on work by first, second and third year students of the school, which was selected, summarized and translated by the members of the association.
- Geoffrey Raoux, Lucille Meinier, Adrien Mozer – Printed electronics in the field of lighting.
- Antoine Goineau – Colour management in 3D printing.
- Mélina Bailly, Jérémy Louis, Frédéric Pontida, Noémie Resclause, Corentin Saillard – Manufacture of electroluminescent sheets for printed electronics.
- Léa Girard, Kévin Gonçalves, Morgane Maisse – Printed electronics for implantable biomedical devices.
- Tom Gouveia, Bertille Calais, Maria Dubile, Zélia Lagors, Salomé Pestre – Optimisation of colour reproduction on the Xerox Versant 180 press.
Our objective was for this publication to offer a condensed overview of topics ranging from scientific and technical innovations, to real-world applications within a variety of sectors, including printed electronics and 3D printing. However, because we were keen to showcase the work of all the school‘s student engineers, we chose to include colour management, a topic covered in the first year, which is a well-known issue and remains pertinent in the graphic arts industry.
What have you learned from conducting this project, both in terms of the present, with regard to day-to-day student life, and your future career as engineers?
Running the project was a very intense experience for all of us. Indeed, we are all in our third year, with quite a few projects to complete (the DEEP Pagora Student Team Challenges, a technico-economic project, etc.). But it has been a very positive experience, because it has allowed us to:
- Put into practice the knowledge acquired during our engineering training in order to understand and summarize the work selected.
- Improve our written English by translating the articles, but also our spoken English by preparing for our presentation at the TAGA conference.
- Discuss various technical topics in a professional environment with which we were unfamiliar.
- Gather the funds required to subsidize our trip to Minneapolis.
- Work as a team to carry out a project that ultimately convinced the jury.
- Develop our self-confidence, particularly our capacity to take on responsibilities.
