Pictured: The freezer aisle at our local Wegmans is full of much-loved ice cream brands – many of which have a State College connection!

Your favorite ice cream may have a State College connection!

You may be familiar with the fact that, in the late 1970s, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield – then, just two childhood friends, now, of Ben & Jerry’s fame – split the $5 fee for a Penn State correspondence course in ice cream making. They received their textbooks in the mail, studied up, and passed their (open book) exams with flying colors. (Before moving on to learn all about business from some Small Business Administration brochures that were sold for 20 cents at their local post office.)

The brand now churns about 200,000,000 pints of ice cream each year in the US alone!

But our local connection to ice cream genius doesn’t stop there. Thirty years after Ben and Jerry got their start, Jeni Britton of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams took the ice cream short course at Penn State to hone her craft and others from Baskin-Robbins, Good Humor, and Blue Bell have brushed up on their ice cream making skills in State College as well.

Want to be next? You can take the famous Penn State Ice Cream Short Course too, and join the list of greats who have gone on to delight the world with sweetness!