Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California has selected Monroe Community College in Rochester, N.Y., as the first community college to train technicians in optical fabrication. The program, which began this month, will serve as a model for a distance education program to supply hundreds of optics fabricators.
Because of a chronic shortage of trained optical technicians, educational institutions have joined with 86 optical manufacturers represented by the American Precision Optics Manufacturers' Association to address the industrywide training concern. The new program is receiving about $500,000 worth of equipment from Loh Optikmaschinen AG of Wetzler, Germany, for hands-on training. Livermore also will donate hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment, tools and consumables over the next few months to facilitate the program.