Coffee Outreach and Education

Coffee Outreach Courses ~ Public Lectures ~ Media James Hayes-Bohanan , Ph.D. Coffee Maven and Geographer Bridgewater State College UPDATED April 11, 2008 My coffee obsession began when I started to understand the plight of many thousands of farmers who work very hard to produce fine coffees and earn very little for their efforts.
I have expanded this site's information about coffee shops, coffee roasters, coffee tours, health effects, and coffee preparation, and have moved that information to other pages. Please explore!

Courses

Studtent-led coffee tasting - Bridgewater State College

"I would teach a whole course on coffee if they let me."

This started as a joke. My father asked how I could give a whole lecture on coffee, and I replied that I would teach a whole course on it if they would let me. With the support of colleagues at Bridgewater State College and the generosity of people in the coffee industry, that course became a reality, and in fact became two courses!

In my study tour (Geography of Coffee) I take students to coffeelands for a direct experience of farming and the preparation for export. So far, that course has been to Nicaragua twice, and I will take students again in January 2009. I am starting to develop contacts, however, in Guatemala and Brazil for future courses in those countries. My field course in Cape Verde is not focused on coffee, but it will include a brief coffeeland visit -- in the caldera of a volcano!

In my second-year seminar (Secret Life of Coffee), students spend an entire semester learning about the industry in depth and educating each other and the campus community about coffee -- from the bean to the cup. I have been honored to work with a wonderful assortment of students in both classes. I have learned a lot from them!

Public Lectures

Undergraduates at Bridgewater State College get most of my loyalty and attention, but I also enjoy sharing what I have learned about coffee with other audiences -- from high school classes to senior-citizen and civic groups. In giving the presentations listed below, I have often been assisted by students from one of my coffee classes or by my wife and colleague Pamela, who joined me on the first Nicaragua study tour and has become a bit of a coffee expert herself.

Upcoming ~ May 1, 2008. Thank the Farmers: The Roots of Coffee. The Village at Duxbury. Duxbury, Massachusetts.
Upcoming ~ May 2008. Campus-wide Coffee Tasting and Fundraiser (with seminar students). Bridgewater State College. Bridgewater, Massachusetts.
March 2008. Um Copo: Fair-trade Coffee in East Timor. Social Justice League film series. Bridgewater State College. Bridgewater, Massachusetts.
November 2007. Coffee: The World in a Cup. Nantucket Atheneum Lecture Series. Nantucket, Massachusetts.
November 2007. Caring for Coffee. Workshop, Nantucket High School Culinary Program. Nantucket, Massachusetts.
June 2007. Coffee from the Grounds Up. The Senior Summer Institute at Massasoit Community College. Brockton, Massachusetts.
April 2007. Brockton, Brazil, and the Bean: Not Your Grandparents’ Geography. Bridgewater Lions Club. Bridgewater, Massachusetts.
April 2007. A Noble Cup. BSC-BR Green Awareness Day. Bridgewater, Massachusetts.
April 2007. Campus-wide Coffee Tasting and Fundraiser (with seminar students). Bridgewater State College. Bridgewater, Massachusetts.
February 2007. Connecting with Coffee. Rotary Club of the Bridgewaters. West Bridgewater, Massachusetts.

If your group would be interested in a presentation on any aspect of coffee -- from the environment to trade to brewing to tasting -- please contact me to discuss a program of any length. I bring excellent coffee! I also enjoy giving presentations on the cultural geography of the music of Latin America, for which I draw on an extensive collection that I have built with the help of friends throughout the region.

Media Coverage

It seems that everyone is interested in coffee, so my modest efforts have gotten a fair bit of attention. I am happy to draw attention to the stories behind the cup -- from the millions of farmers who struggle to make a living while supporting a huge and lucrative industry to the thousands of coffee professionals who have learned that they can honor the farmers and the customers at the same time.

The media attention began with Canadia journalist Matthew Kadey, who joined part of our Nicaragua tour in January 2007, before continuing with his own explorations. He published a lovely photoessay entitled "Nicaragua: Ecotourism allies with fair trade in Central America" in Fresh Cup, which is a trade magazine for the specialty coffee industry. He also wrote "Visiting an Organic Coffee Plantation in Nicaragua" for GoNOMAD.

On March 2, 2008, the Brockton Sunday Enterprise ran DR. JAVA, a profile by correspondent Mike Melanson. My favorite line from the article is "That is why cheap coffee puts a bad taste in the professor’s mouth." I need to correct one possible misimpression from the article -- where Melanson writes about my transporting my students to Indonesia, Ethiopia, and other coffeelands, he is writing figuratively. So far, I have only taken students to Nicaragua for coffee, and I have not yet been to the east-African or Asian coffeelands. The BSC Newlog followed up with "Lot's Brewing for College's Coffee Maven," which described a visit to my class by Michael Lundquist of the Polus Center. (See "maven" note below.)

The My Wonderful World blog was among the first to pick up the Dr. Java story, as part of its Newsflash series of timely geographic articles. The Fair Trade Resource Network has also featured the story on its Making a Difference page. Explore this site to see what is happening to promote fair trade in your own community! The Coffee Cubicalism site ran a nice synopsis along with a cool geographic graphic!

Local media attention started with WBZ-TV on November 6, 2007, when reporter Bill Shield interviewed me for Coffee Prices Going Up, Too, a brief story about the rising price of Cafea robusta. Ironically, this variety of coffee is not part of the specialty coffee world that I have entered. It is the high-caffeine, low-quality coffee of the conventional mass market -- the sort of stuff I complained about in the Dr. Java article!

The Quest for the Perfect Cup of Coffee was written by Lucretia Voigt and appeared in the Nantucket Independent on November 7, 2007. Ms. Voigt is probably a bit too kind in her description of me. The article is based on a extensive telephone interview prior to a lecture and workshop I was giving on the island. The wonders of modern technology are such that I saw the article online from the ferry boat, just as we were about to arrive for the long weekend on the island. Plum TV reporter followed up with a nice photo essay entitled the Geography of Personal Satisfaction, based on the public lecture at the Atheneum.

Coming soon ...

Profile in Bridgewater Magazine and brief item in Glimpse Abroad.

Coffee Maven?

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "maven" is from the Yiddish (where is may be spelled mayvin) and means "an expert, a connoisseur; a knowledgeable enthusiast, an aficionado." My colleague Dr. Pam Russell used the term to describe my association with coffee. The more learn about coffee, the more I realize that I will never really be an expert. But Dr. Russell meant it in the other sense -- a knowledgeable enthusiast, especially an enthusiast who tries to share that enthusiasm with others.

Dr. James Hayes-Bohanan