A new venture at Yuba Community College in Marysville, CA, is training students to be optical technicians. Director Breck Hitz. Students working in the optical shop at Yuba Community College.
Students take courses in reading blueprints, basic optics, and machining lens components.
Gordon Soekland, the project's coordinator and one of the instructors, said the objective of the program is to prepare students to go directly into industry after graduating and require a minimum of supervision and training. They'll also know what an interferometer is, what an autocollimator is, and how they work. They didn't know from one person to the next how they were going to work out. They had to start them from scratch every time, and the learning curve was quite steep. The students studying to be optical technicians at Yuba College have a main project they work on in each of two semesters.