The University of Akron's College of Engineering and Polymer Science has a new dean and a new degree program that isn’t offered at any other public college in Ohio.
Craig Menzemer has been serving as interim dean since 2018 and now officially has the job. He says the new bachelor’s degree in polymer science is being offered in responseto what the school has heard from industry leaders.
“We—and I say we; [it was] the previous Dean of polymer engineering—conducted sort of a market survey of companies in the area and found that there would be a real pull for students with this degree. It was something that may have been lacking in our program.”
About 140 students are in the university’s graduate polymer programs, and Menzemer says courses for the bachelor’s program will begin this fall.
“I tell people to think about it as a pyramid. When you develop an engineer or scientist at the bachelor's level, they have a pretty broad set of skills. Then, as they [study] further, they get a little more specialized. At the PhD level, they're looking at something that hasn't been investigated before, which really advances the state of knowledge to some degree. So, it's like a pyramid: You build a real solid base and then you continue to specialize as you as you go on in your studies."
In 2019, Menzemer discussed U. of A's concrete canoe competition:
Check out the @UAkron_Engr Concrete Canoe pour! @uakron @ASCETweets pic.twitter.com/ESjNHkawT6
— Kabir Bhatia (@KabirBhatiaTime) February 24, 2019
“In the past, you would get the students of varying backgrounds coming into to the graduate program in polymer science and engineering —physics, chemistry, chemical engineering—but this is actually going to be a degree that focuses solely on polymer science and polymer engineering.”
Menzemer joined the University of Akron in 1996 and was previously an assistant dean in the school of civil engineering. Since 2018, he’s merged several schools into the College of Engineering and Polymer Science.
