by Luke Loranger |
Portland’s reputation as a craft beer hub has spread to The Bluff with the creation of a graduate level certification in craft brewing this past summer. This program is the first of its kind in the country, and focuses on the business strategies for craft beer owners.
The program was created by business professors Sam Holloway and Mark Meckler, both of whom have a background in the hospitality industry. Sam Holloway has had an interest in craft brewing since getting his doctorate at the University of Oregon, where he played soccer with fellow graduate students and local residents from Eugene.
There he met the founder of Eugene’s Oakshire Brewing, who wanted to open a brewery after experimenting with homebrews.
“In my former career I was a contractor, so I started helping (the owner of Oakshire Brewing) build a pub,” said Holloway. “I used his little business as a case study throughout my Ph.D. and after that he asked me to join his board of directors.”
Holloway originally intended to write a book about the craft brewing industry, but realized the industry was changing too fast for a traditional textbook. Instead, he approached Meckler to help tackle the food side of the brewing industry, as many traditional brewpubs in America also feature food.
Together, they created the website Crafting a Strategy in lieu of a traditional textbook. The website consists of podcasts, videos, short papers and weekly essays from professors and members of the craft brewing community. It consists of three modules: strategy, marketing intelligence and operations.
“The website is laid out so the course is a pathway through the content. Every topic starts with a suggested navigation path, so students are not overwhelmed by what to look at first,” Academic Services Instructional Designer Maria Erb said. “(The professors) bring their guidance and mentorship to all of the material.”
After creating the website, the two professors were approached by UP about turning their content into an online graduate certificate program. This program is the first of its kind for the University, which had only created hybrid online courses before this point. The program went live at the end of August and costs the same as taking a graduate class at UP. Craft brewing has also been introduced into the undergraduate business degree program as a case study for seniors’ business capstone courses.
“In the business capstone course this year, we are teaching the same fundamentals we always have. But by using Crafting a Strategy, all of these ideas and strategic thinking are familiar to people in Portland,” Holloway said. “In Silicon Valley, Stanford focuses on technology and at University of Oregon, they focus on athletic apparel. Dean Robert Anderson saw the potential to do something that matters to the regional economy.”
The feedback on the program from students has been limited, but positive.
“I am very happy with the course so far and I feel that I have learned a lot already,” graduate student Jose Mondragon-Gomez said.
For Meckler, the importance of craft brewing is much deeper than the content of the website. Oregon laws changed in the early 1980s so that any brewery could sell beer directly to the public, as long as they have a corresponding brewpub. Meckler lauds the importance of ethics in the craft brewing industry, which helps the communities around brewpubs grow.
“Sam and I were in Seattle three years ago sitting in this new craft brew tasting room,” Meckler said. “We were talking to the owner and they told us that, in this neighborhood, you couldn’t walk down the street without someone trying to sell you crack. After two years of this tasting room opening up the whole neighborhood had changed.”
Academic Services is looking to expand their online masters program to other areas of the campus.
“My philosophy with how to explore online learning at a master’s level is to look at the strengths of the amazing facility on this campus who specialize in very specific areas,” Director of Academic Services Sam Williams said. “This (project) honors faculty who have a passion in a specific area and have devoted a lot of time to it.”
Luke Loranger is a reporter for the Beacon and can be reached at @loranger18 or loranger18@up.edu
