The Laser Teaching Center at Stony Brook University

Abstract

The Laser Teaching Center is a unique university-based educational environment primarily devoted to highly personalized active learning through the development of individual hands-on student projects broadly related to optics and lasers. The participants include local high school students and young undergraduates who are new to optics and research, and graduate students in an optics rotation course. We describe the history and facilities of the Center, its educational philosophy and methods, and the experience obtained in nine years of operation. © 2007 SPIE.