May 29, 2025
The Ophthalmic Assistant Training Program is one of many initiatives designed to meet Mayo’s workforce needs by creating and expanding programs to address specific clinical needs. See how the program helped Kate Erwin become a certified ophthalmic assistant.
As a public school art teacher in Rochester, Minnesota, Kate Erwin spent eight years teaching students to see the world through an artist’s lens. But when she began considering a career change, she found herself drawn to a different kind of vision — one that involved lenses of a much more literal kind.
She talked to her husband, Nate Erwin, a project manager with Mayo Clinic’s Center for Individualized Medicine, about possible career options at Mayo. That’s when Nate happened to see the Ophthalmic Assistant Training Program offered through Mayo Clinic School of Health Sciences.
“The timing was ideal as I had been thinking for a couple of years that I was ready to move on from teaching, and I had just mentioned that maybe I’d like to move into something like optometry or ophthalmology,” Kate says.
Once she learned more about the program, it seemed like a great fit, Kate says.
The Ophthalmic Assistant Training Program is one of many initiatives designed to meet the workforce needs of Mayo Clinic by creating and expanding programs to address specific clinical needs enterprise-wide, says Mary Bany, an administrator at Mayo Clinic School of Health Sciences.
Kate enrolled in and completed the eight-month program to become a certified ophthalmic assistant in 2024 and was immediately hired at Mayo Clinic in Rochester. On a typical day, she works with as many as 25 patients, testing visual acuity, checking eyeglass prescriptions, and taking other information before patients are seen by ophthalmologists. Often, she assists with minor surgical procedures or injections for patients being treated for macular degeneration.
