Irvine Valley College was the first school in the United States to have both HeNe and Nd:YAG open-cavity laser educational kits from eLas (formerly PI miCos Campus) successfully integrated into their extensive hands-on Laser Technology program. This paper is presented from two students’ perspective, describing the students’ experiences and including comments from the professors who integrated the laser kits into the curriculum. The main benefits these laser education kits provide for both students and faculty include their specific industrial-quality design for intensive hands-on education. Students learn about laser components and the techniques required to align a laser cavity. Theses laser systems come with lesson plans and experiments that faculty may use as is, or modify to suit a particular emphasis in their curriculum. Once alignment is achieved on a repeatable basis, then many experiments can be performed successfully, such as studying laser mode structure, input current versus output power, and wavelength stability.

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Donn M. Silberman, Gabriel Blanks, Stefan Forschner, Brian Monacelli, Desiré Whitmore, and Debbie Donahue, "Experiences integrating and using laser educational kits at Irvine Valley College's laser technology program," Proc. SPIE 10741, Optics Education and Outreach V, 107410G (Presented at SPIE Optical Engineering + Applications: August 22, 2018; Published: 14 September 2018); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2322490.