Who Are We?
The mission of the Center for Coffee Research and Education is to improve quality and supply of coffee globally through research and capacity building.
In recent years, coffee has become much more than something we drink to get energized. The specialty coffee industry has brought about a culture of coffee tasting and small coffee shops serving high quality single-source Arabica coffee. Coffee is booming.
As the coffee industry grows, so does the need to educate and train the next generation of coffee agronomists, researchers, business leaders, connoisseurs.
Research
Researchers will collaborate with scientists from other coffee research institutions and companies around the world. These opportunities will greatly contribute to making our graduates more job-ready and connect with the industry and research sectors.
Academics
A major component of the Center is training students, from undergraduate to graduate, as well as researchers and industry specialists.
The Center is facilitating new coffee-centric undergraduate courses and study abroad programs in topics such as:
- Coffee genetics
- Coffee culture and horticulture
- Social aspects of coffee
- Engineering behind coffee creation
- Coffee economics
Outreach
While the core feature of the center is its strength in coffee science, the center will give back with outreach efforts. The center worked with agricultural communities of coffee producing countries to find solutions to their problems. There are over 25 million coffee farmers across the globe.
Outreach goals to assist these farmers include:
- Improve high quality coffee and the socio-economic status of the producers
- Develop analytical tools to improve the coffee economy worldwide
To achieve these goals, the center works collaboratively with other groups and institutions across the Texas A&M System. This is academically necessary and also essential for the financial sustainability of the center. Such ambitious efforts work must be supported by involvement in applications with entities that can manage large amounts of funding, such as the Borlaug Institute.