The National Center for Optics and Photonics Education, OP-TEC, is a consortium of two-year colleges, high schools, universities, national laboratories, industry partners, and professional societies funded by the National Science Foundation’s Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program. The participating entities of OP-TEC have joined forces to create secondary-to-postsecondary as well as returning adult “pipelines” of highly qualified and strongly motivated students and to empower two-year colleges to prepare technicians in optics and photonics.