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Medgar Evers College launched its cannabis education as a minor degree program in 2021, after three years of planning. It is offered both as a minor and to non-degree seeking students.
Starting next spring, students at Brooklyn’s Medgar Evers College will enroll in a new bachelor’s program for cannabis science – and some eligible students can earn the degree tuition-free.
Medgar Evers launched New York City’s first college-level cannabis studies minor in 2021 and is now doubling down on its weed industry offerings to provide an entry point to the legal marijuana sector.
“We want to continue to be the hub for cannabis education,” said Alicia Reid, chair of Medgar Evers’ Chemistry and Environmental Sciences Department and founder of the school’s cannabis education program.
Students “want to gain not only theoretical knowledge – the skill sets – but to be able to enter the legal cannabis industry,” Reid said.
Reid and others at Medgar Evers started researching the possibility of offering cannabis-related coursework in 2018, when an increasing number of states were legalizing adult-use weed – and New York was close to passing an ill-fated legalization bill.
The school, part of the City University of New York system, launched a minor program for the 2021 fall semester, which consists of 13 courses.
Courses for the minor program were divided into four different education tracks: formulation and testing, health, cultivation, and commercialization. About 60 students have completed at least one of the classes, said Vikiana Clement, executive director of Medgar Evers’ Cannabis Education Task Force.
Many of those enrolled in cannabis courses were non-degree students who weren’t eligible for widely used financial aid programs like Pell Grants and New York’s Excelsior Scholarship, Clement said. While the school has granted more than 50 scholarships to students taking cannabis courses, the lack of financial aid options decreases access to the industry, Clement said.
With the school’s new bachelor’s and associate’s degrees in cannabis studies, more students will be able to use Pell, Excelsior and other financial aid to take courses.
“We worked very diligently this year to try to create a degree program where financial aid would cover it,” Clement said.
The bachelor’s program will exist under the auspices of Medgar Evers’ Department Of Chemistry and Environmental Science. The school already offered a bachelor’s in environmental science, which had two tracks – health and non-health. Starting in spring of 2024, students will be able to choose a third track within that major: cannabis science, Clement said. Students enrolled in the 30-credit associate’s program can focus on cannabis cultivation or commercialization.
Not long ago, the idea of teaching cannabis courses in college was ripe for jokes, Clement said, but Medgar Evers’ cannabis bachelor’s is a pretty rigorous scientific program: students who earn their degree will graduate with the same credential as other environmental science majors, and will fill the biology, physics and other prerequisites necessary for medical school.
“I didn’t say it was going to be an easy program, but it is a program that really focuses on increasing the percentage of BIPOC scientists,” especially in cannabis, Clement said. “We’re preparing our students to be very serious … not only in understanding what to do in laboratories or different areas of the cannabis industry, but also as researchers.”
Since Medgar Evers began offering cannabis courses, the school hasn’t been able to include plant-touching material, since marijuana remains federally illegal, Clement said. But educators there would like to provide hands-on weed training, and hope the federal government updates regulations to allow such courses.
The school’s marijuana-related courses have already featured as professors a ‘who’s who’ of well-known local and national weed industry figures, Reid said: Damian Fagon taught a course there before joining the Office of Cannabis Management as chief equity officer; Michael Zaytsev taught classes at Medgar Evers before joining LIM College as academic director of cannabis degree programs; and Jesce Horton, CEO of Oregon cannabis company LOWD, has also taught at the school.
Students who completed the minor program are already making an impact on New York’s cannabis industry, Reid said. One alum is now a manager at Gotham, and another is managing at Housing Works Cannabis Co. Others are working in cannabis-related testing and research, she said.
With the new major – and the resulting availability of financial aid – Medgar Evers will offer innovative new coursework that can advance New York’s cannabis industry while remaining true to the school’s roots of bringing accessible, high-quality education to NYC residents, especially minorities, Reid said.
“We were the first in New York City, and we’re working diligently to make sure that we continue to pave the way for what impactful educational programming looks like,” Reid said.
Medgar Evers College’s “original intent was to make sure that people of color had access to quality education, and I think we’ve continued to build on that.”