A new partnership with Tulsa Community College offers job-specific education for those who want to work in Oklahoma’s growing medical marijuana industry.
The eight-week course was created in collaboration with a cannabis education platform called Green Flower. For a flat $750 cost, students can study in one of three programs for dispensary associates, cultivation technicians and manufacturing agents, according to a news release.
The wealth of knowledge the new program would offer the local workforce should be great for patients and the industry, dispensary professionals agreed.
“It definitely sounds like an amazing opportunity for the future of cannabis,” said Hugo Padilla, a manager at OKind Cannabis Co. “Right now we’re hiring a bunch of people that sometimes aren’t qualified.”
Green Flower initiated the partnership with TCC, which then vetted the California-based company.
“We set out to find one school in the state that was truly workforce centric, trying to help people get new jobs and new careers, and Tulsa Community College was really our first choice,” said Daniel Kalef, Green Flower vice president.
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A lot of research went into creating the curriculum for the programs, he said.
“We got input from the industry of people who run dispensaries and labs and grow operations saying, ‘These are the skills that we would like people to know when they come in,’” Kalef said.
Devin Parham, a manager at Nature’s Kiss dispensary, said he had to learn on his own how to qualify for a job in the cannabis industry. He pointed to restrictions on marijuana research from the federal level as keeping the industry in the dark.
“It’s really hard to get correct information, so being able to get something locally that you can trust the sources and it’ll give you science-based facts I think goes a long way,” Parham said.
A news release about the new program notes that Oklahoma ranks ninth for the number of jobs in the cannabis industry. The 2021 jobs report by Leafly, a cannabis investor group, shows that the industry employs more than 16,000 people.
At least last year, Oklahoma’s medical marijuana workers may have outnumbered the state’s construction workers, the report states.
“With unprecedented growth in this industry, there is a need to develop a workforce with cannabis specific skills,” Pete Selden, vice president for workforce development at TCC, said in a statement. “Because these programs are available on demand, it means an individual has tremendous flexibility for when they do the coursework.”
No other higher education institution in the state offers training created specifically for cannabis professionals, the release states.
“Like other highly regulated industries, the need to have expertise in material handling, quality control, patient care, security, transportation, horticulture and more is vital to the success of all aspects of the industry,” Kalef said in a statement.
Green Flower has similar partnerships with seven other community colleges in the U.S., according to the release.
ashley.jones@tulsaworld.com
ashley.jones@tulsaworld.com
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