Some students drink coffee to motivate themselves to learn.
At Lycoming, coffee is learning.
The Warrior Coffee Program delivers real-world opportunities for students to apply what they've learned about socially responsible, sustainable development to help a community in need. Their work has helped the people of the El Naranjito region in the Dominican Republic enhance farming practices to combat the devastating Roya fungus, diversify shade canopy, and employ growing, harvesting, and processing methods that produce specialty grade coffee that sells for $2.80 per pound.
Since its inception, the program has evolved to include multiple academic departments on campus, providing students from all majors with the opportunity to learn the science of growing coffee while designing and implementing community and economic development projects relevant to their major. Lycoming chemistry students help assess the community’s access to clean water and to analyze the chemical composition of green coffee; students pursuing education certification visit schools in the Dominican Republic to collaborate with instructors on effective teaching methods; and political science students work with a Lycoming-supported local entrepreneur to provide access to affordable solar technology, which brings power to the remote coffee growers' homes. Other academic departments have also called upon their students to join the Warrior Coffee project, and young scholars focusing on international studies, Spanish, history, creative writing, psychology, anthropology, sociology, and more have taken part in these interdisciplinary experiences.
The work emphasizes true service and experiential learning and sets up students for careers of social impact and lives of meaning.
Fighting for what's right. One cup at a time.
