Terrapin Beer Co along with Middle Tennessee State University has created a Brewing Education Scholarship Fund to support under-represented communities within the brewing industry.

There have always been two parts of Terrapin Beer Co’s Terraprint initiative, announced last fall. The first, to reduce our impact on our environment, is as important as the second – to increase our impact on the community.

Dustin Watts, Terrapin’s President, wrote in an internal letter to the company in June “I’m here today to tell you that I want to be better.  I want Terrapin to be better.  I want us to create long term change for me as an individual, for Terrapin, and for our community….We want to grow diversity within Terrapin and the brewing industry as a whole. This begins with increasing opportunities for employment and education.”

The scholarship, available to undergraduates in MTSU’s Fermentation Sciences Department, is setup to financially support students who are interested in brewing as a career, as well as an opportunity to intern with Terrapin during the summer between their junior and senior years of college.

MTSU’s Fermentation Science Department has been an excellent partner in getting the scholarship set up, from working to secure additional funding to identifying opportunities to recruit underrepresented populations into the department in the future. MTSU’s participation in the Academic Common Market was incredibly important to us in looking for a partner for the scholarship program. When we look to fundraise and host events for this scholarship in the future, we are excited to be able to tell students in Georgia that, in addition to these scholarship funds, they can also receive in-state tuition at MTSU to study fermentation science.

2020 has been a year that has shown us that as a community, we can come together over beer, even when we can’t come together for a beer.

We look forward to granting our first scholarship award in the coming semesters.

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