Marijuana plants grow in a flowering room at Revolution cannabis cultivation center in May 2019, in Delavan, Illinois. (John J. Kim / Chicago Tribune)

Through a collaboration with a California company, Moraine Valley Community College is offering online courses focused on the cultivation of cannabis and manufacturing of cannabis-derived products.

It’s the first such partnership between Green Flower and an Illinois community college, and the noncredit courses are available for students right away, according to Green Flower.

Green Flower does offer courses through 18 four-year universities around the country, including the University of Illinois at Springfield.

The partnership appears to be the first in the Southland for an institution of higher education regarding the growing and cultivation of marijuana.

Schools including Moraine in Palos Hills and South Suburban College in South Holland had previously rolled out courses for training people to work in dispensaries.

The eight-week programs each cost $949 and more information is available at mvcc.cannabisstudiesonline.com.

Students can start the online courses at any time, with one focused on growing and cultivating cannabis and another on making cannabis-derived products such as edibles. There are no hands-on classwork at the school.

While noncredit courses, students who complete either program will receive a certificate of completion, and there is no licensing requirement by Illinois to work in a marijuana cultivation facility, according to Daniel Kalef, vice president of higher education for Green Flower.

He said there are ample job opportunities for people in the growing and cultivation of marijuana, and that skills learned in the courses are transferable if students want to consider jobs in other states.

Unlike so many other products, cannabis can’t be produced in one state and shipped off to another, Kalef said.

“If you think about the industry it’s so different from any other,” he said. “In cannabis, everything has to happen in the state, you cannot ship across state lines because it’s not federally legal.”

While there are the basic green flower most associate with marijuana, which the cultivation course covers, “there are various edibles, and candy and vape cartridges” that dispensaries sell which the manufacturing course covers, Kalef said.

On Jan. 1, 2020, recreational marijuana became legal for manufacture and sale in Illinois, and companies such as Windy City Cannabis, which already had licenses to dispense medical marijuana, were among the first to offer products for recreational use.

People lined the walk in front of Windy City Cannabis in Homewood for its opening Jan. 1, 2020. (Jesse Wright / Daily Southtown)

Windy City has outlets locally in Homewood and Posen, while Mission Dispensaries, whose parent company is underway with a growing and cultivation center in Matteson, operates retail centers on Chicago’s Southeast Side and in Calumet City.

Kalef said that Green Flower has partnerships with 12 community colleges around the country to offer cannabis courses, and that the courses offered through U of I’s Springfield campus are more “higher level courses” in areas such as the business, laws and medical aspects of cannabis.

He said that Green Flower has reached out to local community colleges with its programs because “they really are much more about workforce development than a university.”

“This is very specific to training you to get a job in one of these areas right away,” he said.

Kalef said that cannabis growers in Illinois and other parts of the country are clamoring for trained employees.

“What we’re hearing across the board is that finding knowledgeable employees is extremely difficult,” he said. “There are people applying (for jobs) without any real knowledge and turnover is high.”

In trying to interest schools in offering its courses, however, Kalef said Green Flower has encountered headwinds.

“There are so many myths around this industry and so many stigmas,” he said.

While individual states might, the federal government does not acknowledge marijuana as being legal for public use.

“Higher education higher tends to rely on federal financial aid and when you are talking about something not legal, there is a lot of hesitancy,” he said.

It’s no different with community colleges, but Kalef said that Moraine Valley was more receptive to collaborating with Green Flower.

They were already offering the dispensary program so it was a little easier to convince them to agree to a partnership, he said.

The courses offered through Moraine Valley come when a Phoenix, Arizona, company, 4Front Ventures, is making progress on a cannabis growing and cultivation facility in Matteson.

An initial phase, encompassing 258,000 square feet, is under construction at 21701 Central Ave., south of the Matteson Auto Mall.

When fully built out, 4Front would have nearly 560,000 square feet of cultivation and production space and could ultimately employ about 500 people. The company is relocating an existing growing center in Elk Grove Village to the Matteson location.

Company officials previously said that the harvests produced at the Matteson facility will supply 4Front dispensaries.

In announcing its first quarter financial results at the end of May, the company said the first phase of the growing facility is expected to be completed in six months, which it said is ahead of schedule.

Commenting on 4Front’s performance, Leo Gontmakher, the company’s chief executive officer, said the initial phase will begin operations sometime during the first quarter of next year, and that the company anticipates growth in its retail operations in Illinois. It said that it has the authority to open 10 dispensaries, including the two currently operating.

“The company anticipates substantial room for growth as it expands both its retail footprint and its wholesale presence” in the state, Gontmakher said in a news release announcing the first quarter results.