Welcome to OP-TEC: The National Center for Optics and Photonics Education

A consortium of two-year colleges, high schools, universities, national laboratories, industry partners, and professional societies is creating OP-TEC: The National Center for Optics and Photonics Education. Funded by the National Science Foundation’s Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program, the participating entities have committed to join forces in creating a secondary-to-postsecondary “pipeline” of highly qualified and strongly motivated students and empowering community colleges to meet the urgent need for technicians in optics and photonics.

Headquartered at CORD in Waco, Texas, OP-TEC will serve primarily two types of one- and two-year postsecondary programs:

1. Those devoted to lasers, optics, and photonics technology; and
2. Those devoted to technologies that are enabled by optics and photonics.

OP-TEC will provide support through curriculum, instructional materials, assessment, faculty development, recruiting, and support for institutional reform. OP-TEC will serve as a national clearinghouse for teaching materials; encourage more schools and colleges to offer programs, courses, and career information; and help high school teachers and community and technical college faculty members develop programs and labs to teach technical content.

The project has four goals:

1. Serve as a national resource center for optics and photonics education and training.
2. Create, assemble, align, and distribute coordinated curriculum materials designed to support optics, laser, and photonics education in high schools, two-year colleges, and retraining of adult workers.
3. Support established and new photonics education programs in high schools, community and technical colleges, universities, and professional societies.
4. Provide education and training for administrators, counselors, high school teachers, and community college faculty members to prepare them to
1. design new photonics technology programs that meet their local needs;
2. infuse photonics into programs in photonics-enabled technologies; and
3. teach optics, photonics, and lasers using curriculum materials distributed by OP-TEC.

OP-TEC will establish a national infrastructure for developing and supporting widely disseminated educational programs in cutting-edge, high-demand technologies that require photonics. That infrastructure will encompass both the secondary and postsecondary levels and will involve collaboration between educators and industry personnel. OP-TEC will help to bridge the gap in the participation of women and minorities in technology and break down geographical and socioeconomic barriers, making the study of technology more widely accessible. By providing career pathways in which students begin the pursuit of technical careers early and transition seamlessly into postsecondary programs, OP-TEC will enable students to acquire the skills necessary to compete in the global marketplace.

The center’s planners project that by the end of year 4 the number of schools using OP-TEC’s materials and services will be 100+ colleges and 400+ high schools, representing collectively 600+ high school teachers and postsecondary faculty members. The net result will be a significant increase in the pool of qualified technicians in the many technologies that are enabled by photonics.

For a PDF file of the preceding project overview, go here.

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• About OP-TEC
• Services Offered
• College Partners
• Industry Partners
• Videos, Presentations & Minutes
• Photonics: An Enabling Technology
• Photonics Skill Standards
• Career Pathways
• STEP II
• Events
• OP-TEC Event Registration
• Contact Information
• Information Request
• Materials Review Form
• Photonics Links
• Professional Society Partnerships