Education in Rochester

Education is a primary industry in Rochester. The city and its suburbs are home to a number of colleges and universities, including the University of Rochester, the Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School, Rochester Institute of Technology, Saint John Fisher College, Roberts Wesleyan College, Nazareth College, Monroe Community College, and the Eastman School of Music. Together with Alfred University, SUNY Brockport, and SUNY Geneseo, each within an hour of Rochester, these institutions comprise the Rochester Area Colleges consortium.

These schools are known for many great reasons, such as RIT’s NTID, National Technical Institute for the Deaf, having an outstanding program for the education of deaf people and a top ranked ASL, American Sign Language, program. MCC is known as one of the best community college systems in the nation, and has a very high ranked soccer team. MCC is home to The Mercer Gallery where students and artists from all over the country exhibit work on a regular basis, located on MCC’s Brighton Campus.

The University of Rochester has some of the best undergraduate programs in the country when it comes to the arts, sciences, and engineering, and the med school has top flight research programs and one of the best primary care currciulums in the nation. The Business school is also at the top of its class in many categories. Not only is the University of Rochester a key institution in the Rochester, as well as American landscape, but it is also the largest employer in the area.

The University of Rochester’s Laboratory For Laser Energetics (LLE) is home to the highest energy laser in the world, the OMEGA laser. OMEGA is capable of emitting light at a power 100 times the electrical power output of the country in less than one billionth of a second. The LLE is currently constructing the OMEGA EP laser, which will be 50 times more powerful than OMEGA and will be the most powerful laser in the world, able to manifest power densities high enough to examine hawking radiation-like phenomena in the laboratory.

The U of R’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics is especially important now, because it serves at the US’s main laser fusion program while the Department of Energy is building the National Ignition Facility. “The Laboratory for Laser Energetics has played a leading, national role in efforts to develop nuclear fusion as a reliable energy source and in the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile stewardship program,” says University President Joel Seligman.

The University of Rochester is also home to its Eastman School of Music, which, according to U.S. News and World Report, is ranked the number one music school in America.