The brewery will offer scholarships to promote diversity in the brewing industry.
Courtesy of USF
By Sofía García Vargas
America’s oldest brewery, D.G. Yuengling & Son, Inc., is set to sponsor a $5,000 scholarship for students of the Brewing Arts program at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg.
According to a press release, the Diversity in Brewing Scholarship will be awarded to a student from a “traditionally underrepresented population” to cover the certificate program’s spring 2022 semester tuition cost.
Director of the Brewing Arts program Jennifer Sedillo said that by working with Yuengling, they “hope to continue to enhance the brewing industry in Tampa Bay while also improving diversity in our field.”
With craft brewing becoming one of the fastest growing industries in the United States, USF’s College of Arts and Sciences decided to launch a 23-week online program available to any brewer enthusiast seeking to follow that career path.
The program mixes the flexibility of online courses with hands-on experience to broaden the student’s knowledge from the base ingredients to the science and business of craft beer.
In Florida alone, there are nearly 20 craft breweries participating in the program, providing opportunities, like internships, to students.
Locally acclaimed businesses like Cigar City Brewing, 3 Daughters Brewing, St. Pete Brewing and Green Bench Brewing are among some of the participating breweries.
The scholarship resulted from a 2019 Brewers Association survey that claimed, “brewery employees are disproportionately white in relation to both the general U.S. population and where breweries are located.”
The survey also showed that most employees were male.
“Diversity has been an ongoing concern of ours for our program and the industry at large,” Sedillo said. “We are certainly aware of this issue, and have been successful in getting more female students into the program recently and hope to continue progress on this front with more underrepresented groups.”
This is not the first time Yuengling has partnered with the university. Since 2017, the brewery has sponsored the Brewing Arts Program’s Student Veteran Award.
To be eligible for the Diversity in Brewing Scholarship, applicants need to be a U.S. citizen or U.S. permanent resident, part of a traditionally underrepresented racial/ethnic/gender/sexual orientation group and be accepted into the Brewing Arts certificate program.
The spring semester cohort will begin on Feb. 7, 2022.
For more information, contact Jennifer Sedillo at jsedillo@usf.edu, or visit stpetersburg.usf.edu/brew.
