When Mike Szczerbiak started teaching opticianry at Durham Technical Community College in 1991, he thought there was some kind of mistake.

"There were only five students in my class," he said.

These days, things have taken a decidedly different turn. The demand for Durham Tech's opticianry program has been healthy, and classes are capped at 30 students per semester to provide sufficient interaction time with the instructors.

Most of the students in the two-year associate degree program are above the age of 20, with the oldest students in their 50s, according to Szczerbiak, the program director. About half of them of them also have a bachelor's degree, a trend Szczerbiak attributed to those retraining for a viable new career.

"This is a career-based program and students have marketable skills after finishing the program," he said.

Besides that, the popularity of the opticianry course is due to a few other reasons. For one, there is job stability, even growth, in the field.

The Department of Labor's latest "Occupational Outlook Handbook" says employment in opticianry is expected to expand 13 percent between 2008 and 2018. The department sees growing opportunities in optometrists' offices, as optometrists prefer to hire better-trained opticians to handle more complex tasks. In the retail sector, retailers such as Target and Walmart are adding optical departments to their stores.

Average salaries for licensed opticians in the Triangle start between $25,000 and $35,000 a year, and usually include benefits like health insurance. Being in the Triangle gives them an added layer of security, Durham Tech's opticianry instructor Barry Dark reckoned, as health-related jobs do well in general.

"I have been teaching here for 17 years. I have never had a student that was not either employed prior to graduating or immediately after graduation," Dark said. "I've always had optical places here call, looking for students."

In the last semester of the program, Durham Tech places students with different optical companies as part of an internship program, which further aids their employability, Dark added.

Opticianry attracts those who are going through career transitions or are underemployed, especially those that are seeing their once-secure jobs disappear.

"I was working for a large communications company that owned a bunch of newspapers in Augusta, Georgia," said Brian Miller, who started the program in the spring semester of 2009. "My job got phased out in 2008. I started researching, and the optical field seemed to be a situation where there's a stable career, (with) good money to be made and I didn't have to go back to school for a long time."

Miller is currently a sales manager at optical retailer Lenscrafters and hopes to further his career once he is a licensed optician.

Durham Tech's program is the only opticianry program in North Carolina accredited by the Commission on Opticianry Accreditation and approved by the N.C. Community College System, with students enrolling from all over the state.

To make the program accessible, Durham Tech operates a combination of online classes and lab sessions at the Durham campus.

The lab sessions are usually full-day sessions once or twice a week, depending on the course load. Students learn to conduct eye examinations, cut lenses to make glasses and contact lenses, and practice dispensing them to Durham Tech staff and students. Additionally, course participants are required to take general education courses such as Principles of Accounting and General Psychology, to enhance their quality as opticians.

Despite the increased popularity of lasik eye surgery, which corrects vision and does away with glasses or contact lenses, Durham Tech's instructor Dark is confident that opticianry as a profession will not be threatened.

"There will always be a number of people that cannot have lasik performed on them and they will need glasses, which means opticians," he said.