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Doctor of Optometry (OD)


Innovation and community-based experience combine for the education you need to offer compassionate care—and the gift of vision.

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Earn Your OD at WesternU

WesternU’s College of Optometry is widely known for its community of peer and faculty support, forming a network of valuable resources designed to prepare you for your future as an optometrist. Our low student-to-faculty ratio ensures true one-on-one learning opportunities, with a curriculum designed to give you a solid foundation in the basics while advancing your knowledge of tomorrow’s treatments and approaches. Spanning the classroom to labs to community-based experience, Western U’s curriculum sets you up for success in a career where you can shape the way people see the world around them, giving you the power to transform lives.
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Our Early Clinical Experiences Sets Us Apart

From the moment you start on your educational path at WesternU, the curriculum emphasizes direct hands-on patient care. This approach spans every semester, beginning in your first year and continuing through your full-time clinical rotations in your fourth year. The curriculum is designed to support different learning styles with modes of instruction including lectures, laboratories, clinical education, and service learning. Your formal optometric education culminates with a fourth-year externship, ensuring you reach proficiency in optometric scope of practice to fully prepare you for graduation, residency training, and licensing anywhere in the U.S. and Canada.
Clinical Experience

Community Health Focused

WesternU students have the opportunity to volunteer at health fairs around the region, which prepares them to become ODs with a shared vision of our core values of humanism, caring, and scientific excellence.

Faculty Mentorship & Student Camaraderie

Our faculty members act as mentors dedicated to ensuring student success, which helps our students flourish in the classroom, laboratory, clinical education settings, and in the community at large. 

Superior Preparation for a Fast-Growing Career

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, optometry is one of the fastest growing professions in the nation. Opportunities are growing due to an aging population, technological advancements, and practice expansion that includes more medical services—all of which are part of the WesternU curricular focus.

 

  • An optometrist holds up a lens in focus while using specialized eye examination equipment in a clinic.

  • Innovation in

    Optometric Education

    Our innovative program emphasizes optometric rehabilitation including neuro-optometry, an emerging specialty that helps patients who have visual and perceptual problems because of a brain injury, stroke, physical disability or neurological illness. This emphasis on optometric rehabilitation also includes vision therapy, low vision rehabilitation, and care for vulnerable populations including patients with developmental disabilities. You’ll benefit from a community of peer and faculty support, with instructors who treat students as colleagues and offer individualized educational experiences that play to your strengths and help set you up for success in the field—particularly when you work one-on-one with patients in the community. By the time you graduate, you’ll leave WesternU with meaningful personal and professional connections that will help you create your future as an optometrist.

    Doctor of Optometry Curriculum
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Exciting Careers Our Alumni

Optometry is a profession with a multitude of job opportunities, including roles like individual private practice, optometric/ophthalmologic, military & public health, academic research and corporate clinical research.

WesternU’s Optometry alumni work in diverse and meaningful careers across the globe.
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Michelle Hammond, OD, FAAO, Dipl. ABO

WesternU Class of 2020, Diplomate of the American Board of Optometry; Fellow of the American Academy of Optometry; Medical Optometrist, Tozer Eye Center

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Henry Hua, OD

WesternU Class of 2017, Board of Trustees, California Optometric Association; Founder, Almaden Optometric Associates

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Christine Pham, OD, FAAO

WesternU Class of 2013, Assistant Professor, Western University of Health Sciences

“Our class developed a real sense of camaraderie over the four years. The interdisciplinary curriculum emphasized treating the whole patient, not just the condition.”

Vipal Gandhi, OD ’13
President, Golden State Optometry
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WesternU VIRTUAL TOURS

Western University of Health Sciences is one of the most comprehensive graduate schools for the health professions. Engage yourself in 360-degree views, videos and photos that showcase WesternU’s colleges, labs, and programs.
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Take the Next Step

The optometry profession is diverse and rewarding. At WesternU, you will find rigorous academic preparation and supportive faculty and peers. This is the place for you!

Get more information today and let us guide you through the application process.