Earlier this month, Le Moyne College released its first beer, Dolphy Day IPA, making it one of the first Jesuit schools to do so. What makes this special, says all of those involved, is that students were heavily involved in creating and making the beer, showcasing the college’s focus on creativity and entrepreneurship.

Le Moyne’s collaboration with Meier’s Creek Brewing Company began last year and from early on, Sarah Cone, a senior at Le Moyne, has been overseeing aspects of its creation.

Cone’s involvement in this project began when Dr. Magdoleen Ierlan, a Le Moyne marketing professor, approached her about running a survey for Meier’s Creek as a project. Cone, along with her fellow marketing students assigned to the project, then set out to survey Le Moyne alumni and other community members, like faculty and parents.

Of the 7,000-to-8,000 surveys Cone’s team sent out, 2,000 returned with plenty of feedback. The survey included questions on what kind of beer people wanted, the flavor of it, and even the name. In fact, Dolphy Day was not an option they sent out in the survey, according to Cone, but so many responses came back relating to the notorious Le Moyne holiday that the team felt they had to take that name.

With the information from this survey, Cone took the collaboration over to Heights Global Marketing, a student-operated marketing firm at Le Moyne, which Cone happens to serve as director of operations of.

After solidifying the decisions on the beer with the data from Cone’s survey, Heights Global Marketing set out to design the can in conjunction with Buzz Creative Groups, the marketing firm that Meier’s Creek usually works with.

According to both Cone and one of Heights Global Marketings’ graphic designers, Sawyer Nizar, this experience was extremely beneficial, giving the Heights Global Marketing team some amazing experience in the field working with a more established marketing firm.

Nizar said that her experience was that of coming up with a design and sending it to Buzz to get feedback, then going again, with Buzz only ever making little touch ups: such as shrinking the logo to fit the can better.

Heights Global Marketing has used this IPA to both establish themselves and Le Moyne as a whole within the eyes of a larger audience, and Cone hopes that this collaboration with Meier’s Creek can lead to more in the future, possibly with a new Le Moyne beer being released every year.