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The Cannabis Workforce Initiative celebrated a major milestone on April 20, when it released its first partially in-person certificate program in partnership with Lehman College.
This isn’t CWI’s first course. Earlier this year, it launched a class in collaboration with Cornell University School of Industrial & Labor Relations teaching students the information they would need to be successful in the cannabis industry. The curriculum covers everything from bud cultivation to the legal aspect of the business to how to be an ethical manager when selling consumers products.
This 10-week program is not much different in terms of content — but it does offer an in-person component. Forty-five of the 450 program participants are taking the class in-person at CUNY on the Concourse, which Program Manager David Serrano says is extremely beneficial when learning material, such as analyzing terpenes by smell. The in-person learning experience brings about different takeaways from the students.
“It’s quite different. There was a lot of engagement — they can raise their hands in the class and ask clarifying questions,” Serrano said after the first session. “We were able to respond to their questions immediately and engage with them. Folks are saying that they’ve learned a lot from these courses and that they feel better prepared.”
Offering the course completely online did have some advantages, such as allowing guests to sign into video lectures from remote locations. But Lehman College’s program also draws in people from all over, including 54 clients from the Department of Probation’s NeOn program.
Jane MacKillop, the dean of Lehman College, explained that implementing the program in-person at the school also brings benefits to New York City’s marketplace as a whole — such as fostering relationships among other academic institutions in the area. One example is the Borough of Manhattan Community College’s security guard, production, and retail program, in which participants are trained to work these roles for small businesses. The BMCC administrators are aware of the CWI’s workplace development program, and MacKillop hopes for a future collaboration between the two when approaching New York’s growing cannabis market.
When CWI first approached Lehman College for a partnership, MacKillop said that the president and provost were extremely enthusiastic. “It fits with the social justice mission of the college. Our goal is to make it easy and available, as well as trying to turn back the clock on the injustice of the mass incarceration of the 1990s.”
So far, students have found the program to be fruitful, whether they’re new or more experienced in the cannabis industry.
Alberto Ortiz, a participant in the new program, was also a student in the 10-week-course taught at Cornell. But prior to taking CWI lessons, Ortiz had been in the cannabis industry since he was a teenager, and both his parents were consumers of cannabis when he was a child, he said.
Despite his more experienced background, Ortiz was really drawn to the in-person aspect of this program, causing him to re-enroll.
“The class is 10 minutes from where I live in the Bronx on the Grand Concourse. And the Zoom thing was great, but I really love to connect with people in person and have those interpersonal conversations,” he said.
Ortiz hopes to work at or own a dispensary in the future, but his ultimate goal is to own a vertically integrated cannabis business, which is difficult to do in New York without a microbusiness license.
Nonetheless, he believes that the classes taught by CWI will help him get there.
“I just want to garner as much knowledge and information and resources to have the opportunity to work in a dispensary in New York State or to open a cannabis business in New York City,” said Ortiz.
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