Code2College

Code2College has experienced exponential growth over the past five years and has successfully driven positive outcomes for over 1,500 students, including acceptance into STEM degree programs and placement into paid, software engineering internships as high school students. We've proven the efficacy and high value of this model by launching the careers of dozens (and soon, hundreds) of diverse, technical high school students who continue to receive return offers to leading Tech firms like Indeed, RetailMeNot, Silicon Labs and many more and are working to bring these same results to students across the country. 

Further, our vision is to empower Tech professionals through skills-based volunteerism, mentorship and a high degree of community engagement through our targeted programming, feedback and discussions around program efficacy and improvement. This prize would enable Code2College to scale our staff to support our growing student population as well as develop new technical curriculum to further develop and grow our diverse, technical talent pipeline. 

As an Educator with a varied professional background, from my early career as an Analyst at Goldman Sachs to my tenure as a Nonprofit Program Manager managing undergraduate interns of color, to my time as a Math Teacher at a Title I High School in New Haven, I feel uniquely equipped to lead Code2College and scale my vision of creating national Tech ecosystems focused on educating, mentoring and preparing the next generation of diverse, homegrown tech talent. 

Though nearly all companies state that they would like to recruit more diverse tech talent, they continue to struggle in doing so. My focus and guiding vision has been to build a diverse and homegrown technical workforce in Central Texas by leveraging professionals in the workforce to educate and mentor low-income and diverse high school students, then partner with many of those same companies seeking to improve diversity and inclusion to then hire them as summer interns prior to matriculating in an undergraduate program. Starting in Fall 2020, Code2College has been on a path of exponential growth, as we have expanded our programming to reach cities and students across the country. We are now serving students in Philadelphia, Denver, Minneapolis and New Haven.

Over 75% of Black, 65% of Latinx and 50% of female students who initially declare a STEM field  switch to a non-STEM major or drop out of college altogether. Code2College is preparing the next generation of diverse, young technical professionals for work in the Austin Tech ecosystem, nationally and beyond, empowering these students through an innovative college access and workforce development program model.

Despite the fact that many of the students we serve live fewer than 10 miles from the offices of Google, Facebook and Dell, they would never think that they would have an opportunity to work there. Yet, after attending a virtual workshop with Indeed, learning valuable professional skills like resume-building and connecting with software engineers in the process, most students say "I want to work here." 

Further, after participating in our program for a few months and learning valuable programming skills, their mindsets shift from "I want to work there" to "I could work there." After consistently demonstrating aptitude and professionalism, many of them are invited to interview with our partners, and then go from "I could work there" to "I'm looking forward to my internship this Summer at Indeed." 

Code2College places high school students into paid, technical summer internships where they earn $6,000/summer. To date we have placed 100 high school interns with 75 planned placements for Summer 2021. Most of the students we serve are low-income and those whom we place into internships earn more than three times their peers in traditional service or retail jobs during their internship Summers. These technical internships allow students to build their resumes, gain exposure to technical careers and alleviate economic barriers students might face when considering their career advancement.

Code2College is intensely focused on providing holistic support to our students through volunteer-driven technical and professional skills building, as well as ongoing mentorship. We utilize a three-pronged approach to combat common barriers to entry: education, exposure and experience. Our program model takes advantage of an early intervention point, as early as ninth grade, to introduce students to coding through after-school classes and bolster their college and career candidacy through professional development workshops with Tech professionals. 

Since its founding five years ago, Code2College has served over 1,500 students. After completing our rigorous programming, involving 100 hours of twice-weekly after-school coding sessions and monthly professional development workshops, 100% of our program graduates are accepted and matriculate into a college or university and 97% are pursuing STEM degrees. 

However, in an effort to a) "meet students where they're at" from a competency perspective, and b) build a more robust pipeline of technical talent through our programming, we are developing four new programs over the next year including Mobile Application Development, a Game Development Program, a CyberSecurity Leadership Program and an Embedded Systems Program. These new curricula are being developed in response to both student demand and industry trends.

By providing students with additional technical curricula, we are 1) keeping Code2College program alumni engaged with new challenges, 2) increasing the types of roles and industries our students are positioned to succeed in at the high school intern level, and 3) creating the opportunity to partner with organizations across a variety of STEM industries and disciplines. 

Not only do these measures improve our students’ candidacy, they also ensure that Code2College can scale its partnerships and funding sustainably.