Where can you have free Ben & Jerry’s ice cream AND learn something?  The answer is, at an upcoming presentation on the Millersville University of Pennsylvania campus. The Civic and Community Engagement Research (CCERP) project at Millersville will feature Jerry Greenfield, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Inc., on April 16, 2009 at Lyte Auditorium on the University campus.

Greenfield and his co-founder and friend since junior high school, Ben Cohen, built a store front venture into a $300 million ice cream empire. With a pre-med degree from Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, Greenfield quit his lab technician job in 1977, took a Penn State correspondence course in ice cream making, and opened Ben & Jerry’s Homemade ice cream parlor in Burlington, Vermont in 1978.

Greenfield and his partner were awarded the Corporate Giving Award in 1988 for donating 7.5 percent of their profits to non-profit organizations, by the Council of Economic Priorities, and were named the U.S. Small Business Persons of the Year in 1988 in a White House ceremony hosted by President Regan.

Greenfield will speak at Millersville as part of CCERP’s second annual Distinguished Civic Leadership Awards at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are free, but are required. The presentation will be followed by an ice cream social. For more information, call the CCERP office at call 717-872-3049 or go online to www.millersville.edu/~ccerp. For tickets, call or stop by the Student Memorial Center Ticket Window at 717-872-3811.

The people who will receive the Distinguished Civic Leadership Awards prior to the lecture include:

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