Until World War II, natural rubber was the only game in town for large-scale manufacturing. But by 1940, sources of the stuff in Southeast Asia were drying up under Japanese control. Knowing it could not fight a war without rubber, the U.S. government was alarmed.

Fortunately for the nation, Akron's academics had not been sitting idle while their city became the rubber capital of the world. Researchers at the University of Akron, which was the first to teach students rubber chemistry in 1909, were asked to solve the problem with their peers in local industry. They did, with polymer science.

The U.S. production of what was known as "synthetic rubber" climbed from 231 tons for all of 1941 to 70,000 tons a month by the war's end, thanks to the work done in Akron.

After the war, some in Akron thought there was tremendous value in the engineering and science they'd just invented, including researchers at the University of Akron. They were right.

The university expanded its efforts and opened the Institute of Rubber Research in 1956, then expanded that to become the Institute of Polymer Science in 1964, followed by creation of the Akron Polymer Engineering Center in 1983, later renamed the Institute of Polymer Engineering.

Finally, in 1988, the university created its College of Polymer Science and Polymer Engineering, with Dr. Frank N. Kelley as its inaugural dean, securing itself as a leader in the field ever since.

In 1991, UA opened the Goodyear Polymer Center to house the polymer colleges — a 146,000-square-foot, 12-story glass structure that still dominates much of the campus today.