Planning Grant Full Proposal for a Midwest Photonics Regional Center

This project supports a planning process for an ATE midwest regional center in photonics education at 2-year colleges in order to address the growing industry demand for skilled photonics workers. Photonics, the technology that incorporates optics and electronics (lasers, fiber-optics, electro-optics, etc.), is a rapidly expanding field that provides highly-rewarding jobs for technicians and excellent opportunities for economic growth within the United States. Photonics is also an enabling technology, with wide-scale applications in manufacturing and materials processing, defense and homeland security, renewable energy, telecommunications, diagnostic and therapeutic medicine, environmental monitoring, nanotechnology, and solid state lighting. The planning project is: 1. Organizing a Midwest Photonics Cluster of industry employers and community colleges. 2. Conducting an employer needs assessment to determine the demand for photonics technicians in the midwest. 3. Identifying other Photonics Specialty Education Centers needed by midwest colleges.

The intellectual merit of this project resides in its focus on photonics, photonics-enabled technologies and the emerging and changing photonics applications that impact our country's security, development of alternate energy, and the economic recovery of manufacturing companies in the midwest. An adequate supply of well-prepared photonics technicians is vital. Success in building the capacity for educating sufficient photonics technicians in the midwest ensures rewarding and high-paying employment for new technicians and enables employed technicians to obtain the additional education and training to keep their jobs as the requirements change and the economy expands.

The broader impacts of the proposed Regional Center lie in the: 1. Potential for photonics enrollment growth by coordinating efforts and providing assistance to midwest colleges as they update existing programs or initiate new educational offerings for photonics technicians; 2. Expansion of photonics applications in manufacturing; 3. Mobilization of midwest colleges to educate employed technicians; 4. Building the high school pipeline to college in photonics fields; 5. Analysis of student performance and employer satisfaction with program graduates; 6. Analysis of the effectiveness of a variety of methods and practices in technician education.