Where Can a Degree in Indoor Agriculture Get You?

June 13, 2025

For this article, author Ganesh Mejia Ospina spoke to Sage Cormier, Senior Hydroponic Classroom Operations Specialist & CEA Instructor at NY Sun Works, about her experience pursuing an associate degree in Indoor Agriculture at Northern Michigan University (NMU). NY Sun Works helped create the Indoor Agriculture program at NMU and Sage is the first graduate of the program that the organization subsequently hired as a staff member.

Sage is now an instructor in NYSW’s Urban Agriculture Workforce Development Program in which 202 students across seven schools are preparing to graduate, making now a good time to explore the benefits of these programs.

Portrait pic of Sage Cormier, NYSW Staff Member

Sage Cormier was finishing her junior year of college in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Almost overnight, the supply chains stalled, putting a great strain on food access for Sage’s community. For Sage, this crisis revealed all too clearly the risks of relying on outsourced food production and served as a wake up call that inspired her next move into indoor agriculture.

During the first phase of lockdown, Sage closely followed local media coverage of events as they unfolded, growing increasingly concerned about the situation in her surrounding communities in the Upper Peninsula. “With the growing social unrest during the pandemic and supply chain issues directly affecting our food access, I found myself thinking: How can I help my community?”

Happily for Sage, in 2020, with the support of NY Sun Works, Marquette’s NMU launched its inaugural indoor agriculture associate’s degree. This was the first associate’s degree of its type in the country, providing education and certification for people wanting to enter the burgeoning world of Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA). Branching out from its K-12 specialization, NY Sun Works helped launch the program, providing the curriculum, teacher training, and hydroponic and aquaponic systems.

Around that time, Sage received an email from NMU notifying her about the new associates degree, and ideas started forming. “I began having a lot of crazy ideas to bring people together by providing food through hydroponic installations in abandoned buildings in Marquette.” The degree seemed like a great opportunity to turn her food justice ambitions into concrete and meaningful work. Sage decided to enroll.

Initial impressions were fantastic. “I really loved the program from the start. The work I was doing and the information I was learning felt rigorous – I felt like a scientist.” More importantly, Sage felt the course nurtured and supported her passion for food justice.

NYSW welcomed representatives from Northern Michigan University at a networking side event during our 14th Annual Youth Conference at the Javits Center

When Sage graduated in 2021, she knew she wanted tactile work with plants, especially as a means to tackle issues around food equity. Naturally, through an interest both in hydroponics and education, NYSW began to feel like a good fit. At NYSW, Sage could work physically with hydroponics but also help develop an indoor agriculture curriculum that benefited student development and contributed to various food justice-related issues.

Thanks in part to her experiences at NMU, it wasn’t long before Sage stepped into the role of instructor on the NYSW Urban Agriculture Workforce Development Program. NYSW launched this workforce readiness training in 2022 with the support of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In brief, the program equips high school students with technical skills and environmental science knowledge to help streamline them into green jobs upon certification. Sage’s role is to train teachers, maintain systems and supervise the rigorous theoretical and practical tests which students must complete before graduating.

“It’s funny, because a lot of the work I do now feels directly related to the work I did at NMU. My degree prepared me really well.” For Sage, the transition into the professional world from the associate’s degree was seamless. It provided her with foundational skills and paired well with other interests, like education, to work in more specialized sectors of the indoor agriculture world.