Recognizing a critical shortage in skilled technicians across the nation’s advanced manufacturing industries, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) established the National Imperative for Industrial Skills (NIIS) program and selected AmeriCOM to significantly build and sustain the country’s precision optics manufacturing base. Utilizing an ecosystem model, AmeriCOM works in concert with industrial, academic, nonprofit, and government partners in regions where there is a significant cluster of optics manufacturing companies to leverage American ingenuity and forge new paths of prosperity for our workforce.
The Important Role of the Optics Technician
Precision optics is often referred to as an enabling technology because it powers the devices and systems that are used every day across all industries — from medical devices to grocery store scanners, from services that stream entertainment into our living rooms to telescopes that beam views of the farthest reaches of our universe, from back-up cameras in our cars to night vision goggles used in our military, and much more. Optics technicians keep our military aircraft flying and our entire nation safe.
On the job, technicians craft the precise components (primarily lenses fashioned out of blocks of glass) found in a wide range of devices, perform testing of optics components and systems, and work with scientists and engineers in research, design, development, manufacturing, and quality control activities. Optics technicians are critical to the companies the United States relies on for defense superiority and national security efforts. The absence of a single technician can delay shipments and impede the productivity of an optics company by causing it to use engineers to perform work that a trained technician could execute — engineers who would otherwise innovate and create the next generation of precision optics technologies.
The Precision Optics Training Program Model
An optics training program is a coordinated network of training providers, manufacturers, nonprofit organizations, and government agencies — a community of people who share the goal of opening pathways for the future generation of our country’s manufacturing workforce. The model drives sustained collaboration between these groups in the assessment of the skills technicians need while on the job and the development of curriculum and training programs to teach those skills. This coordinated effort has the goal of growing the number of high schools and colleges teaching precision optics in order to expand their capacity to train more than 800 technicians per year.
Members of a Training Program work together in a coordinated manner to identify needs of industry for technician skills, develop curriculum, raise awareness of careers in optics manufacturing, and serve as navigators who guide people along educational and career pathways.
Partners in Education
At the core of the AmeriCOM training model are community colleges and other vocational learning centers that offer programs in optics technician training. In our work together, we are raising awareness of optics as a career path across all age groups and recruiting students into certificate, degree-granting, and apprenticeship programs. Join us and be part of our key initiatives, such as:
- Implementing an established Optics Technician curriculum to support one-year certificate-granting programs, two-year associates degree-granting programs, dual-enrollment programs with high schools, and 2+2 enrollment programs with universities that offer advanced degrees in optics.
- Convening regional optics manufacturing clusters, the members of which serve as advisors to the community college optics team. Optics companies help source equipment for labs, provide candidates for adjunct faculty and lab technicians, provide funding for student scholarships and faculty endowments, and participate in events that promote the optics technician career path.
- Managing optics awareness marketing campaigns and conducting outreach activities with area school districts, regional science museums and other cultural organizations, STEM-related clubs and organizations, and work training centers.
- Facilitating “learn while you earn” apprenticeship programs for career advancement.
