Take This Class! Brewing Curiosity About Engineering

The warm, nutty aroma of roasting coffee beans floats through the air. Grinders whiz. Water from gooseneck kettles trickles gently through pour-over drippers. Soft jazz provides a peaceful backdrop for the eight undergraduates with the unlikely class assignment of brewing a cup of java.

With its stark lighting, white walls and proximity to heavy-duty scientific equipment, Room 1145C in the Chemical and Nuclear Engineering Building at the University of Maryland doesn’t have the cozy vibe of your neighborhood coffeeshop. But on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the compact room becomes caffeine central for students in the course “Coffee BEANS: Brewing Engineering and Analysis for Nurturing Sustainability.” 

“The big question is, how sustainable is a daily cup of coffee?” said Esohe Fawole, a chemical and biomolecular engineering lecturer and the course’s instructor. Students learn about water use, waste practices, the environmental impact of coffee farming and different extraction techniques; in labs, they incorporate scientific principles like fluid mechanics and mass transfer to see how they can change the taste of the final product. 

“Every single day I have to have a cup of coffee,” said global health and social data science major Virginia Lee ’27. “I thought it would be really cool to learn how to make the best cup.” 

In every lab session, students start with green, unroasted coffee beans; they put them in tabletop-size air roasters, which can run up to 460 degrees Fahrenheit, to get them to a light, medium or dark roast. They learn about the energy involved to run the roaster’s fan and heat the chamber, and about the chemical reactions taking place in the beans as they turn from pistachio-colored to chocolate brown. 

Then, the would-be baristas experiment with different brewing techniques, seeing how much water and energy is used and how fluids flow through equipment like a classic drip machine, a portable AeroPress, a French press or a pour-over dripper. In one class, students dismantled a drip coffee machine to pore over its inner mechanics. 

The course, which debuted last semester, was inspired by a similar one at the University of California, Davis, where Fawole earned a Ph.D. in chemical engineering. After working as a T.A. for the course, Fawole emerged with an entirely new viewpoint on the classic morning pick-me-up.

“I did not like coffee at all when I started as a T.A.,” said Fawole. “I realize now it’s because the way it’s processed and brewed impacts the sensory qualities of that coffee. I didn’t realize you could make coffee taste like blueberry muffins.”

Fawole received a UMD Teaching and Learning Innovation Grant last year to develop the class, helping them to purchase coffee-making equipment as well as shape the course to help non-STEM students think about engineering “in a way that’s quite literally digestible,” they said. 

The course has changed how students see a drink that for some of them was previously mostly a vehicle for sugar. “I was big on iced oat milk lattes with flavors,” said Caroline Perret ’26, a computer science major. “But now I come here every week, and I get free, hot, black coffee, and it’s really good.”