Latest News University of Pikeville-Kentucky Will Begin Recruitment for Inaugural Class By Staff Monday, February 8, 2016 12:21 AM PIKEVILLE, K.Y.—The University of Pikeville-Kentucky College of Optometry (KYCO) will begin recruiting its inaugural class for Fall 2016. The Accreditation Council on Optometric Education (ACOE) voted to grant the Kentucky College of Optometry the pre-accreditation classification of “Preliminary Approval” after an ACOE evaluation team visited the university from Aug. 30 to Sept. 1, 2015. The ACOE will review the preliminary approval classification annually during the first three academic years of the program, including progress reports and/or site visits as a part of the process. A request for final accreditation status will be made by the university no less than 12 months prior to graduation of the program’s first class.“The classification of ‘Preliminary Approval’ is granted to a professional optometric degree program that has clearly demonstrated it is developing in accordance with council standards,” wrote ACOE chairman J. Bart Campbell, OD. “The program has approval to begin student recruitment, selection and admissions, and to begin offering the program.”Sixty students will be admitted per class, totaling 240. With no other colleges of optometry in Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina or Georgia, KYCO will be the most accessible college of optometry in the Southeastern region of the U.S.“We are the first school to receive such recognition under the new, more stringent accreditation standards, and in a record time of one year and three months from the time we initiated our self-study,” said founding dean, Andrew Buzzelli, OD, M.S. “It is because of the profusely talented UPIKE employees that we will be working toward complying with all of the standards for final accreditation, which will be considered after graduation of our first class.”