College adds cannabis to curriculum

By Tom Dennis

ABOVE PHOTO: MINOT STATE UNIVERSITY

STUDENT ZACHARY SCHULLER MONITORS A SEPARATION PROCEDURE IN THE LAB.

IMAGE: MINOT STATE UNIVERSITY

EDITOR’S NOTE:

In the fall, Minot State University in Minot, N.D., will start offering one of only two four-year medicinal plant chemistry programs in the nation. Chemists who can extract compounds from plants and analyze them can earn up to $70,000 right out of college, thanks in part to the burgeoning medicinal cannabis industry, Minot State reports.

In this interview, Prairie Business talks with Christopher Heth, assistant professor of chemistry, and Zachary Schuller, one of the school’s first students to declare a major in medicinal plant chemistry.

Q. HOW DID THE PROGRAM GET STARTED?

A.

Christopher Heth: A little over a year ago, people on campus were exploring or brainstorming different ideas, looking for areas that we could expand our program offerings into. They were looking for things that our students might be interested in, that those students couldn’t get anywhere else and that would be useful for industries in the state and the region.

Those are the kinds of things that a state university, in particular, is doing all the time.

And with the significant uptick in medicinal cannabis across the country, including the legalization of medicinal cannabis in North Dakota, we wondered, is there something in that industry that we should be servicing?

So, a committee was set up, including me and a few other representatives from the sciences. Eventually, we all agreed that this was something we could do or even should do, especially in the area of the sciences.

Q.

A.

WHY?

Heth: Because while the pipeline of medicinal cannabis begins where the plant is grown and ends at the consumer, there are middle steps that require particular expertise and training, especially in the sciences. For example, some states (though not North Dakota) require that any medicinal cannabis products be in a processed or extracted form. We happened to be able to apply our expertise as chemists to train students to do that.

That’s the direction we decided to go, so we developed it as an additional option in our existing chemistry program. It’s got a little more math and a few more chemistry courses then our general chemistry option, but not quite to the same extreme as our professional chemistry option, which is designed for students who want to go to graduate school.

WILL GRADUATES BE ABLE TO WORK IN INDUSTRIES OTHER THAN MEDICINAL CANNABIS? A.

Q.

Heth: Yes. Our graduates could work in any industry that wants to extract useful materials from plants. For example, hops farming is a growth industry in North Dakota, in part because of the growth in the field of craft brewing. And the skills we teach are similar to those needed for extracting things from hops. Likewise, our students’ analytical skills are what people working in sectors of the pharmaceutical industry are using, so this would be a good launching point for people wanting to do that in their career as well.

Botanicals, health supplements, essential oils, the food-science industry – all of those are good fits. So, while most of the attention that the program will get is on medicinal cannabis, and rightly so, it does apply to other industries as well. Anything that has a plant in it.

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