Oregon State Offers World’s First industrial Hemp Course

Oregon State University’s (OSU) College of Forestry and Department of Wood Science and Engineering have announced a new Ecampus course covering all aspects of industrial hemp.

Beginning on April 1, 2013, OSU will become the first university to offer a college-level course for credit on industrial hemp.

The course will include contributions from twenty-six of the world’s top hemp researchers covering a wide range of hemp-related topics.

The 3-credit Ecampus course (WSE 266 Industrial Hemp) can be taken from anywhere in the world that has Internet access.

According to KMTR TV in Corvallis,

“The class will be offered online through the University’s College of Forestry. The department says hemp is an extremely useful renewable resource worth exploring. It can be used to make rope, clothing, food and even buildings.

‘Wood is still the largest volume renewable material that there is, but there is a lot of interest in other renewable materials and that includes hemp,” says John Simonsen, a professor at the College of Forestry. He helped organize the class and will be one of its guest lecturers. “The hemp market right now is in the neighborhood of $500 million a year in the US alone and all of that has to be imported.'”

This is especially exciting for Oregonians, who passed an industrial hemp bill in 2009.  It currently lies dormant, waiting for change at the federal level to implement.  Now that the walls of prohibition are crumbling, there is hope that this amazing resource will be reintroduced to our economy.  The future of our country and our children require sustainable jobs that industrial hemp can provide.

The need to free ourselves from foreign oil cannot be denied as gas prices hover around $4.00 per gallon.  This and more will be explored in the class.

While it may be too late to sign up for the class this time around, a quick note to the university to encourage them to repeat it could be helpful.  With your input, the hemp class could become a staple of the OSU curriculum.