The first intensive courses in industrial microscopy were started in 1952 in Chicago. We now teach about 75 individual courses each year with a staff of four full-time professors. Our teaching program also extends beyond Chicago, where our courses are taught nationally and internationally, at universities, corporations and public laboratories. These on-site courses include most of those in our Chicago curriculum. Our intensive one-week courses focus on the application of microscopy to the solution of chemical, environmental and forensic problems.
Every course is based on lectures, demonstrations and laboratory practice.
Each student learns each technique by hearing about it, watching it being done and then doing it themselves. Each student is supplied with a polarized light microscope and all necessary accessories, reagents and text materials. Each course would be a full 3 credit-hour course if taught in a university. It is intensive and fast-moving. All of the course material cannot reasonably be absorbed in one week.