Matthew DeBacco plays a critical role in UConn's educational offerings related to cannabis, including the nation's first college-level cannabis horticulture course, "Horticulture of Cannabis: from seed to harvest." DeBacco organized a number of ad hoc greenhouse grow projects established in the Floriculture Greenhouse that augmented the lectures for SPSS 3995. These grow projects provided a basis for students in the large-enrollment course to get experiential, first-hand exposure to some of the cannabis growing techniques referred to in class lectures. DeBacco also led the first online cannabis horticulture course offered by a U. S. academic institution during the 2019 summer session 2, and a new advanced cannabis horticulture course offered for the first time in the summer of 2021.

Email: matthew.debacco@uconn.edu