- What do you find most unique about the CannaBusiness Education Hub and SUNY Columbia-Greene’s specific areas of focus, Cannabis Retail and Sales and Cannabis Cultivation and Processing?
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- Someone can learn how to be a budtender fairly easily, but knowing how to run and manage an organization or one’s own dispensary is key. The practicality of the courses we offer is important. I wouldn’t call them easy classes, but they are certainly real-life based. The course may only be seven weeks long, but it’s a jam-packed seven weeks of curriculum. Additionally, being a community college makes it more affordable for our students.
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- What do you enjoy the most about teaching programs that are part of the CannaBusiness Education Hub?
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- I approach my job as teaching the class that I wish I took in college. The biggest thing is that I really love to talk and educate people about cannabis. It simply never gets boring. I’m even more excited now than when I knew nothing about it six years ago.
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- Looking ahead, what has you most excited for the future of the program and, more broadly, for the cannabis industry?
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- I have never enjoyed work as much as I do now. I find it very curious at my age and stage of life to be at the peak of my professional career. My ultimate goal each day at work is for students to enjoy the job as much as I do.
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- Do people misunderstand the courses you teach or how you teach it?
- The misconception may be at the dispensary level and “being stoners” – but this is a really hard job to do when you are “stoned!” To know all that we do about the product, and to not make mistakes with inventory and money, is what separates us from drug dealers and traffickers. It’s an extremely rules-based industry and those rules need to be strictly followed.
- Do you have a favorite strain name?
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- A Root & Bloom vape cartridge called Ghost de la Chem.