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, St. Bernard’s School of Theology and Ministry, 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.
The University of Rochester, ranked by Newsweek as “one of the new Ivies,” has some of the best undergraduate programs in the country when it comes to the arts, sciences, and engineering, and the medical school has top ranked research programs and one of the best primary care curricula in the nation. The business school is also at the top of its class in many categories.
The University of Rochester’s Laboratory For Laser Energetics (LLE) is home to the second 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.