An optometric education and the Doctor of Optometry degree will provide you with a variety of career opportunities. Optometrists are recognized as primary vision care providers. Moreover, optometrists provide specialty vision care in contact lenses, pediatrics & binocular vision, sports vision, and visual rehabilitation. In addition, because of optometrists’ broad knowledge in vision & medical sciences, they are leaders in academia, industries such as optical, computer software, pharmaceutical, and contact lenses, and entrepreneurial start-ups.
So why choose the Indiana University School of Optometry?
Because we are the premier university based optometry school; at IUSO you will benefit from being part of an educational team delivering the full spectrum of what optometry is today and what it will be tomorrow: excellent clinical training, advanced specialty care, and cutting edge vision science and research.
CLINICAL TRAINING:
IUSO students begin clinical training on day one. In our Integrative Optometry
course, you solve challenging clinical cases by breaking the material down to
the underlying basic sciences. As your education continues, the clinical
sciences courses parallel the basic science courses so that links between
courses are relevant and apparent. For example, what you learn in anatomy is
directly reinforced by learning how to look at the eye in the clinical course.
In the first two years, students will assist in the clinic and you may want to
participate in the annual Volunteer Optometric Services to Humanity (VOSH) trip
to Guanajuato, Mexico while you are an IUSO student.
Just twenty months after entering IUSO you will be ready to examine patients.
This continues into the third year, and culminates with four 12-week externships
during the fourth year. In addition to a rotation that takes place in
Bloomington in which you get experience in every specialty clinic: Cornea & Contact
Lenses, Ocular Disease, Low Vision & Rehabilitation, and Pediatrics/Binocular
Vision, you also can focus on your preferred part of the country, world and/or
area of expertise. You will select your other rotations from an extensive list
of external sites. A sample from a total of 45 sites across the country and
around the world includes:
- Bascom-Palmer Eye Institute, Miami, FL
- Bowersox Vision center, Shelbyville, KY
- Charlotte Eye Ear Nose and Throat, Charlotte, NC
- Eye Institute of Utah
- Eye Surgeons of Indiana
- Huntington, WV Veteran Affairs Clinic
- Dayton, OH Veteran Affairs Clinic
- North Suburban Vision Consultants, Deerfield, IL
- Quantico Naval Clinic, Virginia
- University of Nebraska Ophthalmology
- Wright-Patterson Air Force Base
- Vision Institute of Canada
For a complete list of all of externships, please click here.
At IUSO, you get a premier clinical educational experience. Externship
supervisors around the world consistently comment that IUSO students are the
best prepared for their clinical experience. Our graduates are also known to
excel on the National Board Exams. We are proud to have a 99% pass rate on Part
III of National Boards.
VISION SCIENCE
Our Vision Science program brings the future of optometry to the classroom. IUSO vision scientists are nationally and internationally known as leaders in the profession. You will be exposed to the latest and most significant new developments in optical instrumentation, spectacle & contact lens development, diagnostic equipment and the basis for diagnosis & treatment of eye disease.
In addition, to the customary lecture courses, IUSO has instituted an Integrative Optometry course series. From day one, our students are working on clinical cases as this course brings together topics in vision science, optics, biology, disease, genetics, and physiology-pharmacology. In Integrative Optometry, students are given clinical cases and perform research to uncover the underlying basic science concepts needed to understand the case. Integrative Optometry is in small group meetings with a faculty facilitator and uses the Problem Based Learning approach. This course not only brings the different areas of vision science together, it also provides a clinical real life link to the basic vision & biomedical sciences.
COMMUNITY OUTREACH
The IUSO provides students with opportunities to be involved in the community through outreach projects. Every year, IUSO students provide the screenings for Junior Olympics, Special Olympics, and School Screenings for grades K-5. As well, the past two years IUSO has partnered with the City of Bloomington in celebration of Martin Luther King Day to provide full eye exams for underserved populations. Our students provide athletic vision screenings at Indiana University and the local high schools in conjunction with our sports vision program.
Understanding that we are citizens in a global community, our students have the option to participate in a weeklong trip to our Mexico Clinic that provides opportunities for our students and faculty to examine thousands of patients that otherwise would not have eye care. In addition, hundreds of pairs of donated glasses are distributed to these patients. VOSH students have spent hours prior to the trip logging the prescriptions into a database; for many of these patients it is their first pair of glasses.
VISION RESEARCH
At IUSO, in addition to our premier clinical experience, students who are interested have the opportunity to learn about or actually be involved in research. Research at IUSO is very broad and includes: optical imaging, early diabetes detection, color vision, infant visual development, contact lens optics, ocular surface physiology & dry eye, glaucoma, control of eye movements & sports vision, ocular physiology & disease. Our faculty have grants from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, non-government foundations, and from the vision care industry. For a complete description of faculty research go to: Graduate Faculty Web Page.
During the summer after your first year, you can elect to participate in research with our faculty members in the area of your choice thanks to the Dean’s Scholars Program. This program provides summer stipends for IUSO students to perform research with our faculty members in the school’s laboratories. Inspired by this experience, some students opt to do research and obtain an MS in Vision Science within their four years at IU. Regardless of their level of research involvement, students will often have the opportunity to attend national meetings such as the American Academy of Optometry to present their work including clinical case studies, translational research, or other research.
If you find that research is your calling, IUSO also provides the PhD in Vision Science in order to train & prepare the future entrepreneurs, optometry school faculty, vision scientists, and leaders of the profession.
IUSO BOARD SCORES
Listed below are the last five years of IUSO Board Scores:
| Ultimate Pass Rate |
| 2012 - 91.3% |
| 2011 - 93.3% |
| 2010 - 90.0% |
| 2009 - 92.0% |
| 2008 - 90.0% |
That's why you should choose Indiana University School of Optometry. We have it all!