Utah Doubles Down on Solving Nation's Tech Shortage

LEHI, Utah, June 20, 2019 (Newswire.com) - ​​​​The technology industry is seeing unprecedented growth all over the country. The state of Utah is experiencing that growth just as much or more than any other. The problem is that the supply of skilled tech workers is not meeting the demand. Aiming to solve the need for more skilled tech workers within the state, Bottega, the leading accredited school of software engineering in the United States, in partnership with the non-profit Success In Education, have now had three successful years of teaching high school students the fundamentals of coding through a program called Code to Success.

Code to Success is a program offered to high school students during the Summer, which comes at no cost to participants who sacrifice a piece of their summer plans for learning valuable skills. Instructors and other staff members are provided by Bottega and Code to Success, along with other local sponsor support.

The program is 6 weeks long, in the mornings Monday through Friday, for a total of 20 hours per week, including homework. Participants learn the basics of coding, including core languages like HTML, CSS and Javascript. "The Code to Success graduates will have gained a powerful set of skills that will provide a firm foundation for their development journey,” says Jordan Hudgens, CTO of Bottega. He continued, “From being able to implement professional designs into websites with HTML and CSS through creating dynamic, API based web apps with React JS, the graduating students will have the prerequisite knowledge for entering a wide variety of development fields." While most will agree it can be a challenging new project, because of the newness of the concepts, everyone walks away from the experience feeling enriched.

Speaking on the tremendous opportunity the Code to Success program offers to high school students, Utah Governor Herbert made a statement, “Our Utah population is very computer-literate with the highest percentage of computer usage of any place in America. The demands of these jobs are high. If you want a good job, this is an area where, if you gain the skill set, you’re going to have a high-paying, lucrative job with a great upside throughout your life. [Code to Success] is a great career opportunity.”

"Bottega has already given more than $5 million in educational programs to high school students and teachers, and is giving another $6 million this summer. These programs are important to us because they directly address the needs of Utah," says Eric Wold, Co-Founder and CEO of Bottega. “We can't sit back and expect the state to do it all," he continued.

With 1,200 new students trained this year, 300 of which are completely online, the program seeks to not only develop fundamental techniques within the youth-- beneficial to any career they pursue-- it also seeks to confront stereotypes associated with coding in order to raise awareness about the possibilities which are available to those with the skill sets. “Our goal is to bridge the gap between education and industry by getting students interested in programming and setting them up on a successful education pathway in computer science,” said Rick Folkerson President of Success in Education.

About Bottega: www.bottega.tech - Bottega is a software company and an accredited school. Its mission is to bless the lives of millions of people with high-earning employment in the technology industry. 

About Code to Success: Code to Success is the first step toward making programming a life skill.  We provide the opportunity to access coding training modules, obtain one-on-one mentoring from experts, and take advantage of networking opportunities to pursue internships. Visit CTSUtah.com for more information.

About Utah State Board of Education: The Utah State Board of Education exercises “general control and supervision” over the public education system in Utah. Visit schools.utah.gov for more information.

Source: Bottega