SUNY Adirondack is one of four SUNY institutions — along with Schenectady County Community College, Columbia-Greene Community College and Fulton-Montgomery Community College — to receive a $1 million in funding to create and enhance credential programs and course offerings that provide pathways to employment in the cannabis industry.

Each partner in the grant will focus on a specialty within the cannabis field. SUNY Adirondack will focus on how to best grow cannabis plants, and small business and entrepreneurship in the cannabis industry. The goal is to prepare students for jobs in the fast-growing cannabis industry, which the New York State Department of Health estimates to grow to between $1.7 and $3.5 billion annually. According to the Rockefeller Institute of Government, a $1.7 billion industry could generate an economic output of $4.1 billion and 30,700 jobs, and attract hundreds of millions of dollars in capital investment.

SUNY Adirondack offers five courses, which can be taken independently or as electives in SUNY Adirondack’s Agricultural Business degree program. The courses are stackable to associate degrees in Liberal Arts and Sciences: Individual Studies; Liberal Arts and Sciences: Mathematics and Science; and Agricultural Business, and are also offered as microcredentials, Cannabis Business and Entrepreneurship and Cannabis and Hemp Cultivation.

“We are hoping this program will be a good attractor of students into a new branch of agriculture in New York,” said Tim Scherbatskoy, a biology professor at SUNY Adirondack.