NSUOCO opens Clinical Education Lab

Students at the Northeastern State University Oklahoma College of Optometry now have access to a Clinical Education Laboratory to hone their skills as optometrists.

The CEL includes a large open area with seven complete eye examination lanes and an instructor podium. The area is used as a teaching laboratory for the clinical methods courses and available to students in the evenings as practice lanes to enhance clinical skills and techniques. Three faculty offices and individual student study rooms are also included.

"The CEL provides a new and enhanced facility for our students to have their clinical training and to train for clinical practice," said Dr. Doug Penisten, dean of NSUOCO. "This new facility has been designed to enhance the ability of instructors to teach and instruct better while students learn their skills."

Penisten said the CEL allows students to examine all portions of the eye and make diagnoses and determine treatments.

"They can learn the skills for surgical procedures and anything related to treatment in the scope and practice of optometry," he said. "Of course our goal is to make patients' vision better, so here students can learn to provide correction through the prescription of spectacles, contact lenses or low vision devices."

The NSU Physical Plant undertook a year-long major renovation of the building and it was dedicated Dec. 1 in a ceremony attended by Penisten and NSU President Don Betz.

Betz told those attending the ribbon-cutting that the work of NSUOCO is renowned.

"What you do here on a regular basis is well-known," he said. "I get a chance to meet my colleagues in other parts of the country some of whom have colleges of optometry and they know exactly where I'm from when I introduce myself. It is the easiest introduction I get to make. They ask me what we do here and how we do it."

The historic complex housing NSUOCO was originally the W.W. Hastings Indian Health Service Hospital. Built in the 1930s, the complex was used by the IHS until construction of the replacement hospital east of Tahlequah in 1984. Five years later, NSU competed for and was granted use of the complex by the Department of Labor.

The Oklahoma College of Optometry moved into the renovated main building in 1990. The northernmost building with the CEL was previously used by the university as the Literacy Center and most recently as the ROTC shooting range.