Collegiate Times

It can seem at times that our college experience has been predetermined by a PDF checklist; the dreams of undergraduate enlightenment appearing to be elusive and more like a connect-the-dots of area requirements.

For the patient explorer, though, a few gems exist within the columns and rows of the course timetable, and these exotics may make those bittersweet electives something worth remembering.

It would seem naive to suggest that college students are unfamiliar with beer, but the actual brewing process can be a mystery. For those whose interests in the centuries-old drink extend beyond the beer pong table, professor Sean O'Keefe's fall semester Brewing Science and Technology course offers an introduction to all things beer.

"The objective for me is to basically give the students an understanding about how beer is made, the different styles of beer, what the ingredients are, and what the process is," O'Keefe said. "If a student picks up a wheat or a hefeweizen, or whatever type of beer they may have, they can understand basically how the manufacturer made that beer."

O'Keefe began teaching the course in 2003, after many of his students in the food science major who were interested in the brewing industry would ask him for advice on homebrewing. With a class size of 36, the brewing science class enjoys some elbow room over the food science major's spring alcohol-related class, Bruce Zoecklein's 150 seat wines and vines.

"In the old days, when the class size (of wines and vines) was small, they used to make wine, and it was a little more hands on," O'Keefe said. "I like being able to have the students make beer in the class ... Last semester 90 people were trying to get in, and we're going to have to do something if we want to get the students that want to take the class. But I don't want to dilute it down to where we can't make the beer."

The class selects two styles of beer to brew each semester. O'Keefe said that students select a wide range of beers year in and year out and that the class is capable of pretty much any variety, from pale ales to hefeweizens to imperial stouts and dry stouts. O'Keefe admitted that they don't have the technology to get their dry stout to come off like Guinness but that they can get close.

No matter what the setting, though, alcohol mixed with college students is bound to make people uncomfortable, but O'Keefe uses the classroom opportunity to point out the dangers of alcohol abuse.

"In my first class I have Steve Clark, who's involved in alcohol education on campus, come in and talk about alcohol abuse, to kind of provide a context," said O'Keefe. "I just want the students to know that beer can be fun, but you have to be careful."

Far away from the yeast-filled labs of the food science building lies something that may appear very strange - contemporary reality, or at least the search for it. Professor Robert Siegle's course on contemporary culture falls under the English department, but really is impossible to pin down. It is an attempt to tear down all constricting traditional thought and establish a connection between all the contemporary arts.

"The course is on how people who are changing the arts figure out how to do that ...We look at a lot of different art forms. We look at film, literature, music, performance, dance - we look at a lot of things. We also read some of at a lot of things. We also read some of the essays the people who made those things were reading when they were trying to figure out how to do things differently," Siegle said. "These are people who wanted to talk back directly to the moment in which they were living, rather than detouring back in time through the sorts of responses that had been worked out a generation previously. If you could imagine your generation reading only works written by people born in 1910, or before, it would be kind of weird, wouldn't it, if what you were trying to learn was how to talk back to your life's circumstances?"

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