The science of alcohol has not been a formal area study for SIU students—until now.

SIU is adding a new Fermentation Institute, which will inhabit the remodeled McLafferty Annex.

The Illinois Board of Higher Education approved the institute last summer. Matt McCarroll, the director of the Fermentation Science Institute, has been working on the courses and details of the program.

McCarroll said fermentation is most commonly associated with beer, but the institute will teach brewing science, viticulture and enology, food areas, pharmaceuticals, industrial energy applications and energy production processes such as the ethanol fuel program. The institute will use lab analysis and lectures to teach subjects.

McCarroll said he started the process back in 2009 when he began teaching Chemistry 180. The course involves chemistry, microbiology, physics and engineering.

“Students are so interested in the beer and brewing process that you can sneak in the science,” he said. “A lot of times students get frustrated with learning science because they don’t have context for why what they’re learning is important. If you turn it around and talk about what is important and then teach science to make them understand the process, they stay interested.”

He said he started the process to make a program out of the course two years ago.

Laurie Achenbach, dean of the College of Science, said the first step of the process was filling out a reasonable and moderate extension, or RME, form. Then the form is approved by the appropriate dean before going to the provost, constituency groups affected, faculty senate and associate provost for academic affairs.

“After all those steps, the chancellor, president and Board of Trustees approve the document before sending it to the Illinois Board of Higher Education,” she said. “There is a very long list of approvals it must go through and it must meet very strict criteria in order to get approved at every step.”

McCarroll said the institute is in the process of pooling together interests and existing resources from different departments.

The institute will collaborate with the College of Science, College of Agricultural Sciences and College of Engineering. He said there is a possibility to work with the College of Business and the School of Law.

“A lot of our students will be looking into starting their own breweries,” he said. “So taking microeconomics will teach them how to run a business. There are also a lot of unique laws when it comes to working with alcohol so I hope [the School of Law] can help us with that.”

Jim Garvey, vice chancellor for research, said the institute will be valuable from a research standpoint. He said the agricultural aspect of growing grains, microbiological aspect of yeast, flavoring, water and chemistry will all provide research opportunities.

He said a goal of the university is to become more interdisciplinary, which means multiple colleges and departments working together toward a common goal.

“We have a facility that is being built and will be up and running soon and quite frankly, I’m really excited we’re going forward with it. I have high hopes for the institute.”

The institute will have a service lab, which will allow standard tests to be run on beer and wine, McCarroll said.

“Most of the breweries and wineries have equipment to do really simple tests,” he said. “There will be a lot of things we can do in our laboratory that [other breweries] can’t.”

McCarroll said the program will utilize a gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer (GC/MS) which has the capability of separating compounds in a sample and identifying what the molecules are.

McCarroll said the institute will eventually be set up with an olfactory port. This will allow users to smell what is coming from the sample. The GC/MS will separate the compounds and send the sample into a snorkel to be smelled individually and identified, he said.

Although the institute is new, many of the classes will come from different departments and most instructors are already with the university, McCarroll said.

One faculty member the institute will need to hire is a tenured-track position. This will be a joint search between the College of Science and the College of Agriculture. He said the candidate would have a teaching and research focus and work with the institute.

McCarroll said he hopes the institute will be open to students for fall 2015.

Brent Meske can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @brentmeskeDE.