Dean McCurdy, Associate Vice President of Food and Community Sustainability
KVCC healthy living campus-Tower Pinkster design Courtesy of Tower Pinkster design
Ever since WMU and KVCC announced the nation's first sustainable brewing program people have been joking that they wish they could have gotten college credit for their beer studies. Jeremy Martin finds there's much more to the new program than the jokesters imagine.
Brewing beer is an amazing practice. It allows people to harness natural processes such as fermentation and germination, drives technological innovation, and above else gives humanity a near magical elixir, concocted from some of the earth's most basic plants.
The magic of beer, especially craft brewed beer, has exploded in demand over the past two decades. From that outburst, an entire industry has blossomed. Breweries, distribution companies, malteries, hop farms, promotions companies, the list of businesses born from this wave of popularity goes on and on.
Cities, and entire states have gone all in, devoting large sums of their tourism budgets to promoting the local brewing industry. Beer festivals, brew trails, brewery tours, all have become networking and educational centerpieces in beer-based tourism and promotion.
The beer industry has found its way into nearly every crevice of societal consciousness, except for one major arena--higher education. Until now. That's beginning to change and it's happening right here in Southwest Michigan thanks to a joint program created by Western Michigan University and Kalamazoo Valley Community College which begins in the fall of 2015.
"I think the educational aspect has been lacking," says Mike Babb. "But now there's been a wake up call, and there's a lot of interest from a lot of institutions due to the rapid growth and success of the craft brewing industry."
Babb, a renowned brewing educator who worked for two decades at Miller-Coors before joining the staff at Chicago's Siebel Institute was enlisted to help create the WMU/KVCC program alongside educators at both schools and a panel of local industry experts.
What WMU and KVCC are doing is no small feat. The joint university and community college curriculum will be the first of its kind to teach not only the science and practice of brewing, but focus a lot of attention on brewings' environmental impact, while also preparing students for non brewing jobs within the industry.
"Because we've had the opportunity to build a program entirely from scratch we were able to look at sustainability not just as an add on," says Dean McCurdy associate vice president for Food and Community Sustainability at KVCC. "A lot of the features we intend to incorporate are demonstrations of technology, but also we're looking at programs: What do you do with spent grain? How do you reduce water usage? There are a lot of different components."
Much of the hands-on brewing knowledge will taught in downtown Kalamazoo at the new KVCC Healthy Living Campus. The school will be constructing a state of the art brewing facility and classroom from the ground up, which it aims to have fully functional by January of 2016.
The brewery will be close to 200 square feet and have room for upwards of 30 students per class, but all of the details on design and budget have yet to be fully worked out.
Babb, who previously designed the curriculum for Red Rocks Community College in Golden, Colo. has been instrumental in drawing up plans for what is being called either the "teaching brewery" or the "experimental brewery."
"We want a facility that has all the technology and features that a full brewery would have but scaled down to a smaller size," McCurdy says. "We need something that would allow us to give all kinds of training, to look at several different scenarios, and simulate different types of things. That's what we're designing now."
Part of building the facility and creating the curriculum is figuring out what is trending, technologically speaking within the industry and understanding what current brewery owners and operators are seeking when they bring in new employees.
"We talked to people in the industry; we talked to some of the bigger operations like Bell's and Founders and Arcadia and some of the smaller breweries as well. Talked about what they would find useful, if there was a need for a program, and we worked with them very closely to craft a program that we think is going to really help shape the workforce over the next ten to twenty years in Michigan and in the upper Midwest," says Dr. Ed Martini, Associate Dean of the WMU college of Arts and Sciences.
Students will have three options. Classes can be taken as part of an entire program beginning at KVCC and finishing at Western, or they can receive a 30 credit brewing certificate by going through only the community college portion, or students can simply take a class here or there to hone their brewing knowledge.
"You do not have to be enrolled in the entire program, you can take it in bits and pieces. I think that's what's exciting for a lot of folks is maybe they've been in the brewing field for a while but they see a particular course they would benefit from--they can come in and take that course," McCurdy says.
In order to take the KVCC courses, students must first pass a food safety exam.
The full program, which consists of 96 credit hours, 30 of which will be taken at KVCC, will be part hands-on brewing, part business, part fieldwork, and an awful lot of science.
"The program that we've constructed is a very rigorous, science heavy program. It looks almost identical to the first year for a premed student," Martini says. "There are a lot of people that want to do it but they're going to have to get up to speed with some of their math and science curriculum.
"We're going to try and support them if this is what they want to do, but the reality is, this is a really challenging bachelor of science program with chemistry, physics, upper level biology and microbiology."
In fact, WMU is only creating one new class for the program, as the majority of the WMU credits will be earned within the already established science department.
Which is one of the reasons Martini, McCurdy, and company were able to get the curriculum online in what is essentially record time for the academic world.
"We started talking about it a couple of years ago. We were kicking around ideas for new programs, new interdisciplinary programs we could work around. We spent a lot of time last year getting our new program in fresh-water science and sustainability up and running and that was really interdisciplinary around multiple disciplines and colleges and got us thinking about what a brewing program would like," Martini says. "We realized we had the resources to do a bachelors degree and to do it with a theme of sustainability. It's as aggressive as we've been I think in developing and then instituting a program."
Another reason for the speedy process? Western didn't want to be the second school to offer a brewing degree in Michigan.
"Back in September, Central Michigan dropped offhandedly in the press that they were putting together a certificate and it was pretty clear that other institutions were looking at it too," Martini says.
In offering the first-of-its-kind degree in Michigan, WMU, and KVCC looked towards the country's West Coast for cues on how to build its own curriculum.
"There are two very outstanding programs out West--one at the University of California Davis that really grew out of the vintner program there, and another at OSU, Oregan State University. Those have kind of been the standards for university programs in the U.S.," Babb says.
Both of those programs, along with those at Siebel, Auburn University, Eastern Washington, and others focus primarily on the hands-on and scientific aspects of brewing, while typically forgoing the industry's environmental impact or other trades that support the brewing practice.
For their part, educators at both KVCC and WMU want to offer a more holistic approach to the subject and to prepare students for work in all aspects of the brewing industry, from warehouse and distribution positions to marketing, business management, PR positions and more.
"You need to know how the brewery interacts with the community, how it interacts with all kinds of other industries. You need to learn how to be a successful business person. How you are going to approach distribution? All of those things are aspects we're trying to include in the curriculum that will provide a well-rounded approach," Babb says. "What we'll be doing is relying on experts in the fields that kind of dovetail with the craft beer movement."
"Folks from the industry will be brought on board," adds Martini, "I don't know if they're going to be teaching any full classes but they'll be regularly making guest appearances and showing up to talk with students and maybe give some guest lectures as well."
Students going through the KVCC portion of the program will regularly take field trips to area breweries, hop farms, distribution centers and other places to learn first hand what it takes to excel in every position being taught in the classroom.
"We have a course called Brewing 110 which is sort of a brewing history," McCurdy says. "Part of that is to introduce students to the brewing community. A lot of it is going and spending time in other facilities, getting to know it, knowing what the landscape looks like and what practices exist or might exist."
Students will also be expected to understand alcohol's power as an intoxicant and will be taking courses that emphasize the safe consumption and handling of beer.
An initial obstacle, which was overcome thanks to both institutions close work with the Michigan Liquor Control board was KVCC's desire to include all students over the age of 18.
"Under Michigan state law, all students can participate in the program, they can work in the program, and can actually taste and sample their product; they just can't consume it; and we can't sell it. Ninety-nine percent of what gets produced at KVCC's experimental brewery is actually going to get dumped down the drain, unfortunately," Martini says.
Beyond coursework, graduation from the program will hinge on each student's completion of an internship through KVCC, and WMU is also looking into an additional internship capstone to its side of the curriculum.
The field aspect and end-of-program internship are two of the primary factors that have driven Arcadia Ales' Dave Sippel to become a board member.
"The internship element is what I'm really looking forward to," Sippel says. "Whatever a student's grand plan is, however they want to put their education to use--whether they want to open a little brew pub or work in a large scale production facility--they'll have internship opportunities at Gonzo's, which is a smaller place or go into Bell's, one of the largest breweries in the county, and Arcadia is right in the middle of that as well. Whatever scale they're looking for, there's something for them in Kalamazoo or at least West Michigan," say Sippel, the director of brewery operations at Arcadia.
Sippel and the other area brewery representatives which make up the 10 member advisory board have helped the program during every step of the creation process, offering their input and guidance as both institutions look to educate the future leaders of the brewing industry.
A major role played by the advisory board is in helping develop KVCC's teaching brewery, making sure the layout replicates that of an actual commercial brewery and stocking the facility with all of the tools and technologies a modern brewery would have access to.
"We want to make sure the facilities meet the needs of the program and of the employers. We want the students to be training on equipment that they'll be actually working on when they get out there in the industry," McCurdy says. "This is probably the best example I've seen, at any institution, of really integrating the development of a program with industry and integrating with partner institutions."
Another partner in the program, albeit one getting a bit less recognition is Kalsec, Babb's current employer.
The Kalamazoo-based food industry lab works with large commercial breweries to create hop extracts, distillations, and other advanced hop products used during the brewing process.
"We want to be able to use them as a tool in the tool kit," Babb says. "One of the growing difficulties is that there are going to be shortages, and there already have been of certain kinds of hops. My thought is you can lay a baseline of flavor and aroma down with some of these advanced hop products and then supplement that with some of the higher priced and short-in-supply cone hops.
"They're donating my time, donating some money to the school, and one of the things that they would like, which I do anyway in my teaching, is making sure we're presenting the students with all kinds of tools that can be used. Not just with hops, but with malts, and equipment for energy savings and waters savings and all of these things that can sometimes be an issue for craft brewers."
Environmental issues such as water treatment, waste removal, and alternative energy use will be some of the topics discussed, along with efficient business practices, inventory accounting, community relations and networking.
Of course, it's the good old fashioned brewing component that has garnered the most attention for the program, though all involved hope the curriculum's all encompassing approach to the topic, coupled with its focus on sustainability will set it apart from other current and future educational opportunities.
"Given the draw of the Kalamazoo/Grand Rapids area and how well-known we are for beer culture," Martini says, "that combined with Western's reputation for sustainability, I think its going to be attractive."
Jeremy Martin is the craft brew writer for Southwest Michigan's Second Wave.
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