Wilbur Wright College Aims to Expand Cannabis Studies Program.

By: Kyle Chmielowski

Solomon Spencer, a student at Wright College, landed a job in the cannabis industry when he networked with Mission Dispensary at the Wilbur Wright College career fair in the fall of 2024. 

Originally from North Carolina, Spencer’s involvement with cannabis may be viewed as  controversial. “I grew up in the Bible belt, sometimes very fire and brimstone about stuff like that, especially when the science is so new to people,” Spencer said.

When he returned home to inform his grandmother about his new job, he was surprised about her reaction. “She was mad at me because she was like ‘You didn’t bring me any edibles or anything’ and I was thinking the reaction was gonna be you’re mad at me because I’m working with the devil’s lettuce,” Spencer said.

Spencer decided that despite the taboos back home, cannabis offered him a sense of community, and he was intrigued to study it in college. The cannabis studies program is offered at Olive Harvey and Wilbur Wright College. Wright’s program has 30 students enrolled for the upcoming 2025-26 academic year.

Jordan Melendez, Wright’s cannabis studies program coordinator, said, “The goal for the program is to ensure that students obtain the hard skills from actual professionals in the field to gain willful employment in the cannabis industry.” 

The cannabis studies program requires students to learn the professional skills for entering the cannabis industry. This includes the botanical science behind cannabis plants, and the interconnections between cannabis and criminal justice. 

Illustration by Tito

Students are required to take horticulture 104 to earn an advanced certificate to be a cannabis processing technician. The class is offered at Olive Harvey College, but it is not provided at Wright College because the school has no facility to cultivate cannabis.

“This is a program that requires a certain level of hard skills, vocational skills, and the only way you can learn that is by being hands-on, literally with the plant,” Melendez said. 

The Cannabis Regulation and Tax Act, which legalized recreational cannabis in Illinois, also had a provision that community colleges could cultivate cannabis with a Community College Cannabis Vocational Pilot Program (CCCVPP) license. Melendez said if he can secure funding he wants to use Wright’s license by having “a dedicated on-campus or off site facility” to cultivate cannabis.

Akilah Easter, a former biology professor at Wright, helped create Wright’s cannabis studies program curriculum in 2021 before she became the Dean of Urban Agriculture at Olive Harvey. Now she oversees Olive Harvey’s greenhouse, which offers students studying cannabis a chance to be hands-on with the plant.

In addition to the science aspect, the cannabis studies program also focuses on the legal and historical significance of cannabis. 

Toni Forge, a professor at Olive Harvey who teaches about restorative justice in cannabis, said, “If you’re a community college in an area that has been impacted by the War on Drugs, isn’t it incredible that you would have these classes in order to educate folks, and maybe they can become cannabis business owners,” said Forge.

Ceelife English, a student of Olive Harvey’s cannabis studies program, said, “As an entrepreneur, I always look at the things that I am learning and being able to put them into action.” English wants to turn his entertainment company Magnificent Management LLC into a multi-state cannabis consulting agency. 

English said the cannabis studies program offered opportunities to network within the cannabis industry, such as when he attended the Hawaii Cannabis Expo.

If students are interested in taking cannabis classes they can visit ccc.edu, under student tools, click academic calendar and search cannabis. Spencer said, “Learning about cannabis is really fun, to gain that education is something I'm just very thankful for.”