Kickstart: Honoring Dow's first female chemist, a key figure in the history of polystyrene

In 1929, Sylvia Stoesser became the first woman chemist hired at Dow Chemical Co. During her time there, she earned 22 patents and became a key figure in the development of polystyrene, including co-editing the first comprehensive book on styrene.

According to her Wikipedia entry, Stoesser found freedom to chase her interests at Dow: "In our laboratory no idea was discarded as being too crazy to investigate. In fact, we were encouraged daily to consider the impossible goal. Along with that freedom of thought and encouragement to try the impossible came many failures at the laboratory stage — but there were also many new product and process successes," Stoesser is quoted as saying in a history of the company.

Some 90 years later, Dow has now honored her by naming its newest building the Sylvia Stoesser Center.

It houses 350 employees and is connected to Dow's global headquarters in Midland, Mich.

(Although perhaps Dow could do a little more to boost her profile. A search for the word Stoesser on its website yields no hits. Although there was a nice post on Twitter about the building's opening.)

Update: Dow notes that while the search function does not provide information about Stoesser, under the website's history page is a "Women in STEM" page, which includes Stoesser.

If your taste in economic forecasts is to keep things nice and steady, has Bill Wood got a forecast for you!

In his regular Number That Matter column, economist Wood says the U.S. economy seems to have settled into a fairly straightforward pattern.

"When I combine the consistent 10-year performance ... with the extremely average performace from last year, I derive a forecast for the U.S. economy and the plastics industry in 2020 that comes in right around the baseline ... again," he says.

That seems to have remained the same even as politics and regional conflicts raged.

"It is impossible to predict what it will take to push these graphs away from their baselines," he added.

If there's one thing in common uniting various branches of the plastics industry it's this: It's really hard to fill job openings.

The Akron, Ohio, chapter of the Society of Plastics Engineers hosted a session Jan. 13 with organizations that help train and find workers. The employment chase is, as Ralph Sinistro, director of the Akron, Ohio, location of Ohio Means Jobs, put it in a story by Frank Esposito, a "whole new ball game."

Companies have a generation of employees who are looking to retire in the coming years, and very few people in the pipeline to fill those jobs.

"It takes time to learn these skills, and they're looking at a lot of tribal knowledge walking out the door," said Jenny Stupica, manufacturing engagement director with workforce development firm ConxusNEO in Akron. "They want operators with five to seven years of experience, but those people aren't out there."

The good news? There are agencies out there ready to work with companies on finding and training workers. The bad news? It won't be easy.