June was there and reports
On November 4th, Long Beach City College (LBCC) held a joint event with the Long Beach Cannabis Association (LBCA) explaining the success and challenges oftheir collaboration training students to work in the cannabis industry by being taught by industry experts, called the Introduction to the Cannabis Industry.
The collaboration involved industry experts from inception to implementation. The panel discussions covered the history of development of the courses. The LBCC President of the Board of Trustees opened the event. LBCC& LBCA worked closely with the City of Long Beach to ensure that all stakeholders were on board with the venture.
Former students, now employed in the industry, spoke about their experiences as well as LBCC administrators. Administrators said they worried about the level of interest and 800 people wanted to sign up for courses! Demand was there for sure. Economic and Workforce development office support is critical for community colleges in California and that was in force for this programming because they found the jobs were there. And my only question is with legal cannabis struggling so hard these days
– California is expensive as most places are today – to live, eat, drive. I worry that the jobs data is inflated. No doubt great education is taking place and LBCC students did find jobs. It seemed from the audience and the level of interest in the courses, we may still be at the stage of people/students just being interested, regardless of jobs. That might mean these programs also belong in for credit arenas where students explore careers.
Takeaways are so many takeaways there will be several articles regarding it. For this post, collaborate. Set up an advisory board as you develop your cannabis program. I am working on that in Orange County.
Get industry professionals to give you input. This is not new to the cannabis industry. This is best practices for workforce development. What is inspiring about LBCC’s success is the support of the Board of Trustees.
Questions arose during development; would any federal funding be at risk due to this programming? LBCC resolved some of that by offering their courses as not-for-credit. In California this means Community Education.
That is totally legitimate. This does mean no credit so college students would be adding on courses without furthering their units toward a degree or certificate Audience was around 75 individuals, there were some on zoom so maybe more. I connected with the LBCA afterwards to help replicate this success for my own college on a much smaller scale.
