Headline: Polymer Engineering and Science: Penn State Behrend’s New Engineering Major
Author: Alex Bowser, Science and Technology Editor
As the fall 2020 semester had come to a close, Penn State Behrend announced that they will be offering a new major: Polymer Engineering and Science (PES). Students of the PES program will learn how to study and analyze the materials that make our world function in order to research and innovate new materials.
Before the new polymer major was offered, most students particularly interested in such would take a major in plastics instead. Now, according to Penn State Behrend officials, the polymer major will be a major of its own, which will still relate to but branch from plastics engineering.
Students will be working in health care, aerospace, and automotive manufacturing, and will include building and designing everyday materials, ranging from simple items of interest such as clothes to manufacturing electronics and even medical devices.
The classes consist of mostly polymer work in labs, as it partially did when it was combined with the plastics major, but will also have a focus on studying physics, chemistry, and mathematics, and even economic impacts. More information regarding requirements and the curriculum plan can be found on Behrend’s Bulletin website.
The Erie campus has been known for both its professionalism in the plastics industry and their opportunities provided to students within the plastics program, most notably in their labs. Not only is their lab the largest academic plastics lab in the United States (10,000 square feet), the degree it comes with is only one of four accredited plastics engineering programs in the nation.
Recently, before the start of the fall 2020 semester, Behrend had received delivery in July of a Zhafir Zeres injection molding machine made by Absolute Haitian, a company that manufactures and distributes injection molding machines. This machine is a 101-ton electric press that uses hydraulics and a microcellular foaming technology to create molds through low-constant-pressure injections.
In total, Behrend’s plastics lab has 11 injection molding machines in use like their new Zhafir Zeres, which have been available to all plastics engineering students, and will now be provided to polymer-specific students as well.
Before the announcement of the new polymer major, when the Zhafir Zeres delivery was finalized, one of the owners of Absolute Haitian, Glenn Frohring, explained, “we’re aware of the challenge the plastics industry faces in recruiting next-generation engineering talent.
“Providing access to current injection molding machine technology is one way we can help address this issue.” Frohring continued to also state that their company has “proudly maintained a relationship with Penn State Behrend going back to 2008 when we first consigned a machine to their program.”
Greg Dillon is the chair of the PES program and one of the professors who will be teaching PES courses. Similar to Frohring’s statement earlier in the year, Dillon explained, “because of their deep understanding of the relationships between structure, processing, and properties, polymer scientists and engineers are in demand in every industry that uses polymers, and that’s almost every imaginable industry.”
Most likely due to the high demand for a more specific program for those interested in polymer science, Behrend had officially decided to pursue the opening of this new major.
Photo: behrend.psu.edu/Penn State Behrend
