Back from brink, MCC optics program thriving
It's tough to get higher tech than the OptiPro Pro 80 GTS.
About the size of a phone booth, with a separate arm holding a control panel covered in buttons, dials and a touchscreen, the machine turns discs of glass into specialized, very precise, very expensive optics.
One of those computer-controlled grinders — along with a sister machine, a Pro 80 P polisher, both made by Wayne County's OptiPro Systems — stand in the front of Monroe Community College's optics lab, in stark digital contrast to the much older equipment farther back in the lab.
Two such machines can easily cost $300,000-plus, adjunct instructor Ed Fess — who also is R&D manager at OptiPro — told the class of close to a dozen MCC students. "Anything we do in optics is not cheap," Fess said.
Those students and that new equipment both are part of a major turnaround in MCC's Optical Technology program. Offering associate's degrees and certificates in optical systems technology, the program dates back to the early 1970s and has long been a feeder for local optics companies seeking workers.
Yet by 2008, with a total enrollment of 10 students, "the program was pretty much on its death bed," MCC Dean of Career Technical Education Javier Ayala said. "It had almost all the nails in the coffin."
Today, the program is stocked with newer equipment, and enrollment is up significantly — 43 students in the fall of 2014.
The Optical Technology program — with classes on everything from technical mathematics and physics to electro-optical devices and systems — has deep ties to the area optics industry. It initially served major area employers with optics needs like Eastman Kodak Co. and Xerox Corp., Ayala said. Its graduates include Fess; Jim Sydor, owner of Chili optics maker Sydor Optics; Mike Mandina, the president of Ontario, Wayne County, optics maker OptiMax; and Tony Marino, owner of Rochester glass blank maker Advanced Glass Industries.
Its subsequent decline had numerous causes, from retirements of some key faculty, to the slide of what had been major consumers such as Kodak, Ayala said.
Then the area optics industry started attempting to save it. "We said 'We can't let this program die,' " said Sydor. "It's where we're going to get workers."
Sydor Optics hired two graduates from the program last year, Jim Sydor said. "JML (Optical Industries), (Corning) Tropel, we're all looking for qualified workers," Sydor said.
And MCC President Anne Kress, who started in 2009, made it a priority program after getting optics industry feedback "before we knocked that last nail in the coffin," Ayala said.
That turnaround started with resuscitating an advisory board for the program, made up of people representing some of the area's optics companies.
"We found the program had not been engaged with business and industry like it should have been," Ayala said. "A good standard of success for a lot of these programs, they have to be plugged into business and industry. You have to know what types of jobs are out there.
"We need their ownership so students can actually get the jobs they're being prepared for."
That committee both reached out to area employers, letting them know about the program's needs, and started looking over the curriculum, giving feedback, Ayala said: "They gave a critical eye to all the courses. We listened a lot, and got a sense of what we needed to correct."
Some courses already have been revamped, and others are underway now. As of this spring, "a good core of the courses" are updated, Ayala said.
MCC also opened up its labs to the advisory committee, letting them evaluate the equipment. And in some cases, Ayala said, it wasn't up to date, with MCC then laying out a multi-year plan of upgrades. MCC bought the OptiPro equipment using part of $14.6 million the State University of New York's community colleges received in 2012 from the U.S. Labor Department. That same year, the Corning Inc. Foundation announced it would put $500,000 over the subsequent five years into MCC's optics program — with Sydor personally putting up another $250,000.
"We had 1950s equipment, Kodak's throwaways," said Sydor, who is a member of MCC's Optics Advisory Committee. "Now most of the equipment is 2000 or newer. That's cutting-edge technology."
Along with the new gear has been a bigger push for students.
"It's marketing." Sydor said. "It's people not even knowing the word 'optics.' I don't make eyeglasses. If they don't know there's a career in optics, how are they going to know to enroll in the optics program?"
Today the program — taught by a mix of full-time faculty members and adjuncts coming from the local optics industry — is a lot more up to date, though "there's always something more — there's always the latest and greatest," Sydor said. "If we had more space, maybe we could offer a course in coating.
"Is it perfect? No. But it's gotten a lot more current than it's been over the years."
The Sydor Optics company van got shrink-wrapped with a billboard for the MCC program. The college also has taken steps to reach out to area high schools, offering optics among its "2+2" programs where students get admitted simultaneously to the community college and to various four-year schools, and talking to physics teachers and guidance counselors.
And starting about three years ago, Rochester's East High School and then Gates Chili began offering optics courses that have become a feeder to the MCC program, Sydor said.
Justin Cushman, 19, of Spencerport, took an optics class his senior year at Gates Chili, earning an MCC credit. And after hearing about the job opportunities in the industry, he headed to MCC's optics program. "I enjoy the science behind it," said Cushman, while behind him in the lab section of the Advanced Optical Manufacturing class, students were getting hands-on time with the OptiPro machines. "It's not $8 an hour and your job is not going to be shipped to China."
In the lab portion of the Optical Technologies 235 course, Fess peppered his instructions with such terms as "vibration characteristics" and "spindle commands" and "axis configurations."
"There are a lot of jobs available," Fess said. "Good-paying jobs."
Graduates of the MCC program are ready for technician jobs such as fabrication or coating, maybe assisting a designer, or to go onto engineering programs at four-year schools, Sydor said.
"They know what optics is," Sydor said. "You're able to hit the floor running. They're way ahead of the game."
MCC student Michael Lang, 49, of Rochester, works at Henrietta optics maker Rochester Precision Optics doing measurements for quality assurance. He's been in the industry for close to 20 years. But Lang said through the MCC program, he is hoping to both earn a degree — "It's a personal goal," he said — and advance in the company.
"I kind of want to move up in engineering, design," Lang said. "If you don't know how they're made, how can you design them?"
MDANEMAN@DemocratandChronicle.com