Irvine, CA--Physik Instrumente L.P. (Auburn, MA) senior applications engineer and founding director of the Optics Institute of Southern California (OISC; http://oisc.net; Aliso Viejo, CA) Donn Silberman was recently honored by the University of California (UC) Irvine Extension with the Dean's Outstanding Service Award for his work there as a founding advisory committee member of the Optical Engineering and Optical Instrument Design certificate programs.
"The high caliber of contributions from these course instructors and advisors is what makes UC Irvine Extension a top-notch institution," said Gary W. Matkin, dean of Continuing Education, Distance Learning and Summer Session.
In addition to being senior applications engineer at Physik Instrumente, Donn is founding director of OISC, a nonprofit organization based in Orange County that promotes math, science, and engineering through optics and photonics education and related technology education initiatives.
"I was shocked," Silberman said about the award. He said he was so focused on keeping the optics courses going that he didn't stop to revel in the program's success. Silberman said he pushed UC Irvine Extension, which has online courses, to do hybrid courses that were in a classroom and online. "We did it and it worked," he said. "What it meant is that we could get more students into our courses."
He said he has students as far away as Canada and Israel popping into his courses online, which is opening up professional development to students far from Irvine's borders. For more information about UCI Extension, visit http://extension.uci.edu.
SOURCE: OC Register; www.ocregister.com/news/irvine-379575-extension-silberman.html
IMAGE: UC Irvine has honored Donn Silberman (holding award) with the Dean's Outstanding Service Award for his work at UC Irvine Extension as a founding advisory committee member of the Optical Engineering and Optical Instrument Design certificate programs. (Courtesy OC Register)