Berkeley Optometry: A Brief History
The growth in optometry residency programs was largely due to Veterans Administration (VA) support of clinical education for optometry students and residents. Henry Peters (Class of '38), who left Berkeley Optometry in 1969 to become founding dean of the University of Alabama, Birmingham, School of Optometry, established the first VA residency in 1973 at Birmingham.
The Council on Optometric Education, recognizing the need for validation mechanisms by which to ensure standards in advanced optometric education and clinical training, accredited its inaugural optometry residency program in June 1976 at the Kansas City Veterans Administration (KCVA) Medical Center. Berkeley Optometry became the KCVA's first affiliate in 1978, largely through the initiatives of Robert Carty, OD, KCVA Chief of Optometry, and Kenneth Polse (Class of '65, OD '68, MS '69), who was then an associate professor and director of clinics at Berkeley Optometry. The KCVA residency concentrated on ocular disease, low vision, and team healthcare. The innovative program was modeled after VA medical and dental residencies. It was the first clinically based, one-year, accredited optometry program in the U.S., establishing a model followed by many VA and school programs thereafter.
Berkeley Optometry added two more affiliated VA programs in the 1980s. Edwin Mehr (Class of '41) and Curtis Keswick (Class of '75) directed a new residency program in the Palo Alto Veterans Administration Medical Center (Western Blind Rehabilitation Center) beginning in 1983. Bernard Dolan (Class of '80) established a program at the San Francisco VA Medical Center in 1985.
Berkeley Optometry's on-campus optometric residencies
Berkeley Optometry established its first on-campus residency in 1983; from 1983 through 1989 residents were offered programs in binocular vision, low vision, contact lenses, and visual functions. On-campus residents in the late 1980s-early 1990s treated patients and instructed or supervised in general or specialty clinics nearly half their time. They also attended seminars and graduate colloquia, taught in optometric laboratories, conducted research, engaged in independent or group study on topics assigned by faculty, and attended didactic courses. Current on-campus residency training follows a similar path. The present-day program's goal is to provide each resident with mentored postgraduate education and clinical training in one or two specialty areas of optometric practice — primary care, ocular disease, contact lenses, low vision, pediatrics, and binocular vision.
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