SYRACUSE — It’s so rare for Eye Consultants of Syracuse to come across trained, experienced ophthalmic assistants that when it does, the practice will sometimes hire the person even if it doesn’t have an opening.

“We look all the time,” says Heather Whitt, a certified ophthalmic medical technologist at Eye Consultants. “There is just nothing as far as training in this field.”

Whitt is hoping a new training program launching this fall at Onondaga Community College (OCC) will help her practice and others fill a major need for ophthalmic assistants.

Ophthalmic assistants often either educate themselves through books or through on-the-job training programs at practices like Eye Consultants. Whitt says she spent seven years attaining her current certification, which is a few steps beyond what an entry-level assistant would work toward.

“I did it myself,” she says. “It was not easy.”

The closest formal training programs for assistants, she adds, are in New Jersey and Vermont.

Eye Consultants approached OCC with the idea for the program after an internal brainstorming session, Whitt says. They solicited letters from eye-care professionals around the state to demonstrate the need for the program.

They received thousands of messages supporting the idea.

It was one of the strongest responses to a potential program the school has ever seen, says David Wall, director of corporate and public partnerships at OCC.

“It’s so unusual to have an industry come in like this,” he says. “This is exciting stuff. This is the way it should work.”

Ophthalmic assistants assist eye-care practitioners in retail optical dispensaries, medical offices, and hospital settings. They are trained to perform numerous diagnostic tests and can perform a variety of other tasks like contact lens instruction or assisting during eye surgery.

The training will begin this fall at OCC as a non-credit program, Wall says. The long-term goal is to develop a full degree or certificate program around the training.

The process to develop the full program should take a year or two.

There are simply not enough ophthalmic assistants in the marketplace, Whitt says. That’s one reason the program at OCC could draw students from around the state, she adds.

For practices like Eye Consultants, training new assistants is a major expense in resources and time. Whitt says it can take months before a new assistant is up to par.

The work itself is challenging, she adds. Ophthalmic assistants are often expected to anticipate a doctor’s needs and order certain tests without specific instructions.

That way, when ophthalmologists sit down with patients, they already have all the information they need, Whitt says.

Ophthalmic assistants are certified by an international body, the Joint Commission on Allied Health Personnel in Ophthalmology. The OCC program will prepare students to pass the group’s initial exams.

The commission offers seven different certifications. Entry-level assistants can earn $13 to $15 an hour.

OCC’s Wall says he expects the initial non-credit program to launch with 15 to 20 students. The school must keep the class sizes reasonable since lab work will be a key part of the program.

The goal is to make sure students get plenty of practice with the instruments and equipment they’ll be using in eye-care practices, Wall says.

OCC is still finalizing a few of the program’s courses. The college plans to launch enrollment and marketing for the program soon, Wall says.

Contact Tampone at ktampone@cnybj.com

SYRACUSE — The School of Information Studies (iSchool) at Syracuse University will serve as one of 50 sites around the world for the second International Space Apps Challenge, sponsored by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

The hackathon-style event will take place at the iSchool April 20 and 21. NASA will release 50 specific challenges it hopes to address through the events in the coming weeks.

Teams will come together at events around the world to develop applications to solve those problems, says Chelsea Orcutt, an organizer of the iSchool event. The challenges will be grouped in four categories including hardware, software, data visualization, and citizen science.

The iSchool event is open to anyone in the Syracuse community. Orcutt says she expects strong participation from the iSchool and across the Syracuse University campus.

Organizers are hoping for about 75 people. Participants don’t need to organize themselves into teams ahead of time.

Projects produced through the events are judged at the local level, Orcutt says. The most promising among them go on to NASA, which chooses the ultimate winners.

The iSchool is hosting the event for the first time, but NASA began the challenge in 2012. It focuses on addressing challenges related to both space exploration and social need, according to the iSchool.

The 2012 event brought participants together at more than 25 locations around the world and at the International Space Station.

The local event could be a starting point for solving NASA problems, but Orcutt says she wouldn’t be surprised if some teams produced more advanced technology over the course of the two days.

“We do have quite a bit of talent in Syracuse,” she says. “So I imagine people will be coming up with something more complex.”

NASA and the iSchool have been partnering on various projects in recent years, Orcutt adds. The agency has participated in some coursework at the school and the iSchool has been involved in NASA’s open government initiative.

Hosting the challenge is a continuation of that partnership, Orcutt says.

“We want to be able to give real world experience to our students,” she says. “Not just iSchool students. It could be any Syracuse student.”

Working on a project directly related to a challenge presented by NASA will naturally look good on students’ resumes, she notes.

Orcutt says more information will be posted about the challenge in the coming weeks on the iSchool website at http://ischool.syr.edu. The event also has a Twitter feed, which can be found @SpaceAppsSU.

Contact Tampone at ktampone@cnybj.com