Faculty at Flint Colleges are Helping Turn Local Bars Into Classrooms

Many downtown Flint bars and restaurants have taken advantage of the musical and artistic talent in the city to offer various types of performances that create unique vibes in their establishments during happy hour. Rotating events at Queens’ Provisions and Tenacity Brewing tap into another major resource in the city, however: academic expertise.

Scholars on Tap, originally launched in 2017 as “Science on Tap” by Kettering University and the University of Michigan-Flint, featured monthly lectures from August-May each year, mostly focused on science or engineering concepts. The series paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, but Kettering rebooted it in 2023 as a series of talks at Tenacity featuring Kettering faculty. In late 2025, the approximately monthly series expanded as Kettering partnered with the Michigan State University Department of Public Health. Now, Scholars on Tap rotates between faculty members from the two institutions and also switches locations between Tenacity and Queens’ Provisions.

“Being at a university, there’s lots of ways that our faculty and staff can learn different things,” said Cindy Donner, director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Kettering, who organizes Scholars on Tap. “There are all different kinds of seminars that are going on over the lunch hour on campus or different things they can participate in. But I feel like this one (Scholars on Tap) is just special because it is a lot more casual.”

The idea is to take academic concepts and make them fun, engaging, and approachable, so that expert-level knowledge of a subject or discipline isn’t required to absorb the information. The creativity of faculty members takes it from there. Topics over the years have included things like the mathematics behind juggling, the elements of songwriting, nuclear safety, Esports, the science of color, and the science behind hidden hazards and unseen wonders. Presentations last approximately 30 minutes, and often include demonstrations or even participatory elements that get the audience involved. 

On January 12, Vivienne Hazard, PhD, from the MSU Department of Public Health, will present, The SNAP Cycle: How Benefit Timing Shapes Family Stress and Mealtime Dynamics, at 5:30 p.m. at Queens’ Provisions. 

“There’s lots of collaboration that can happen organizing these, which is really nice,” Donner said. “The goal is that they’re speaking about something that they’re passionate about. We had the math behind juggling, or there was a game that someone else had brought in with theirs where we actually played the game. We did a computer science one about algorithms where it was called the muddy city, and we all had a piece of paper and a pencil and we had to get to the village in the least amount of stops. And Jim Huggins (Kettering faculty member who presented that topic) explained how that actually fit into computer science and coding. The professors are all pretty good about bringing things to a level that anyone can understand, which makes it a lot of fun.”

Supporting Local Businesses

Scholars on Tap also fits into a national trend in cities: people are looking for unique things to do when they’re out socializing, and the interactivity combined with limitless potential topics from faculty in different disciplines fills that void.

A similar rotating series in Los Angeles called ‘Lectures on Tap’ was profiled in the Los Angeles Times in December. Reporter Kailyn Brown noted in that story that the L.A. events, which are ticketed, regularly reach capacity and tickets have become scarce.

Donner has noticed similar growth with Scholars on Tap. Andrew Watchorn, a Kettering faculty member, presented Music Principles for Engineering Design complete with demonstrations on musical instruments. Watchorn’s lecture filled the side room at Tenacity Brewing.

Dick Sadler, PhD, a faculty member at Michigan State, presented Beyond Redlining: Exploring Additional Urban Development Practices that Drive Disparate Trajectories in Neighborhood Quality at the November Scholars on Tap lecture. He noted that one byproduct of the series is that it helps faculty and staff across institutions get to know each other and the wider community.

“Quite a few of us here do community-based research so we’re ‘in’ the community, but we can have a habit of winding up stuck in our small social networks,” Sadler said. “And for us at MSU in Flint in particular, we don’t have the benefit of going to ‘campus’ every day. So the opportunity to connect with other academics and community members who we may not know in a social setting can be restorative and uplifting–a throwback to the brain-expanding times of grad school! Being open to meeting colleagues and community members and finding potential areas of overlap is a service we can do for our community.”

Donner said that in addition to being a unique way to highlight the work faculty do, it is also a positive way to support local businesses. 

“I think it’s very nice to be at a neutral place in the community to do it and support that establishment,” Donner said. “I honestly think that that’s one of the reasons that people come, at least from Kettering, because many already are comfortable at Tenacity or are part of the Mug Club, so it’s a place they’re familiar with.”

Emily Doerr, owner of Queens’ Provisions, said that the lectures are good for businesses, but also just good for Flint in general by bringing knowledge that lives in the universities out into the community in a more accessible way.

“I definitely appreciate the Scholars on Tap event series first as a resident because it celebrates the concentration of accomplished passionate academics we have working in Flint which is so neat!,” she said. “Then I also appreciate it as a business owner because I do think it attracts new people to Tenacity Brewing and Queens’ Provisions which is always good – specifically people who work for academic institutions and for whom being connected to the community isn’t a requirement but it makes working and teaching in Flint more joyful! And that joy helps build good culture and feed more passion.”

A Growing Partnership

Scholars on Tap has grown, in part, because of relationships across institutions. Ben Pauli, PhD, a faculty member at Kettering, first connected Donner with Sadler. Sadler was able to connect Donner to another MSU faculty member, Heatherlun Uphold, PhD, who has helped with planning.

Now, beginning in February, faculty from UM-Flint are going to begin participating again. 

“We’re going to do a rotation between the three schools,” Donner said.

For Sadler, he encourages faculty to participate. Even for faculty who are used to lecturing in a classroom setting, he had to adjust to the format and also talk about his research in a non-academic setting.

“It was surprisingly imposing to give a talk to a mix of my colleagues, friends, and community members!,” he said. “I don’t often go into detail about my work with my friends, and am often kind of a silly person in social spaces. So buttoning up and being serious and digging into my work in a way that friends and community members can appreciate was a challenge. That to say, it was a great exercise in making sure the importance of my work can be plainly and widely seen by others.”

Scholars on Tap lectures typically occur monthly, and are promoted on the Kettering University Facebook and Instagram pages. As the series continues to grow, organizers hope it can be a way to just simply introduce more people from Flint’s colleges to social opportunities in the city.

“When I was hired, it was made very explicit to me that faculty should aim to live and breathe Flint as much as possible,” Sadler said. “I have been able to do that, and I hope that for every new faculty member we hire. It’s hard to get fully connected to a community when you don’t live there, but events like these formalize the casual process of meeting people ‘on the town’ the way us locals do at Art Walk, the summer festival circuit, the Farmers’ Market, or at Firebirds, Bucks, and AFC matches.”