SUNY Niagara rolling out culinary cannabis certificate program

SUNY Niagara is already a local leader in cannabis education and the college will take it a step further next year.

The community college will offer a new culinary cannabis skills certificate program starting next fall, a co-curricular program between the Niagara Falls Culinary Institute and the school’s horticulture program. The school’s board of trustees approved the new program at its monthly meeting this week.

“This is a new industry in New York, and new industries need proper education,” said Nathan Koscielski, assistant professor of hospitality and culinary arts at the culinary institute who teaches the culinary cannabis courses. “Since we are a state school, we can provide the proper education.”

The certificate course requires 30 credits taking one year to complete. On top of the culinary institute courses on how to work cannabis into cooking, students will also take horticulture classes on how to grow, dry and cure it.

Koscielski is an expert on using cannabis in everyday food, having taught courses about culinary cannabis and edibles, the first of its kind for a SUNY school, before cannabis became fully legal in 2021. He even gave presentations on it at the American Culinary Federation’s National Convention in Phoenix this past July.

Interest in getting into culinary cannabis came as Koscielski read feedback forms from graduating students, asking what the college could have done better. Some of them talked about how they moved to California where cannabis was fully legal, feeling left behind since they did not know how to properly use it.

It led to an epiphany Koscielski — there needed to be a class to better educate students who do end up in that situation.

“It’s important to stay cutting edge,” Koscielski said. “I want SUNY Niagara to be the best college possible. The way to do that is by being inventive, creating new programs, and not sticking to the status quo.”

What started as the first credit-bearing lecture course on culinary cannabis became popular enough that an additional lab class was created, also the first for SUNY. The lecture class averages 25 students a semester and the lab class averages 12 to 14.

While most people think of the psychoactive effects of using cannabis, Koscielski teaches from the medicinal standpoint and how to infuse compounds like CBD, CBG, and CBN into food. Those compounds best infuse into food with high amounts of sugar, fat, or alcohol.

The many different strains of cannabis each have their own smell and flavor, so he also teaches how to best match different strains with different foods

SUNY Niagara also offers horticulture classes as part of workforce development and has hosted the SUNY Cannabis Conference for the past two years, which it will do again this coming January. With this certificate program starting next year, Koscielski’s next goal is to turn that into a full two-year associate’s degree program.

“It’s something that puts SUNY Niagara on the map,” Koscielski said. “Not many schools can say that about one of their programs.”

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