It’s a program in industrial chemistry,
we’ve had a program in industrial chemistry
for about 60 years at the associate's level.
Recently based on input we’ve gotten from
other people, we decided we need a bachelor's
level degree program, in industrial chemistry.
So we made a curriculum proposal, it was approved
by the board last summer, started this
fall. So we now have a BS degree in industrial
chemistry with a manufacturing track and a
fermentation track. So preparing people to
go out and work for anywhere that uses chemistry
and the industrial process.
So the fermentation part of it, it originally
started out thinking primarily about beer,
wine, cheese, bread. The places that we use
yeast, you know fermentation, to produce something.
It’s a concentration, so you would choose
either two sets of requirements for now.
Either you want to go the manufacturing
track which involves some engineering classes
some statistics classes or you choose the fermentation
track, which includes some hospitality and
food safety classes, some biology classes,
and some microbiology classes.
Down the road I certainly anticipate additional
concentrations or tracks. We’ll have two
new classes, one in intro to fermentation;
we’ll make wine, we’ll make beer, we’ll
make cheese, we’ll make something else.
What do you have to think about when you have
to make something that involves a micro-organism?
And then the second thing that we’ll
do, second class that we’ll do is an analysis
class. If you made something using a micro-organism,
what are the analysis tools? What are the
industry accepted analytical protocols for this? And
the other new one that we’ll do is an internship.
I tell my students at the beginning of the
first semester, chemistry is the study of
stuff and how it changes into other stuff.
A lot of things facilitate that change, heat
does, light does, microorganisms do, other
chemicals do. So for me fermentation is just
another tool to turn this stuff into some
stuff that’s got value added.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
A mind stretched by a new idea, never returns
to its original shape; so I am all about pushing
students to places they haven’t been before,
exposing them to things they haven’t thought
about before because this programhas done that for me. It’s made me think about things
relative to fermentation that I haven’t
thought about before.
