Another year of growth is on the horizon for Per Scholas!  November 29 marks the day applications open up for our upcoming training tracks with plenty of new additions and a larger reach for our cost-free training.  In 2022, expect to see expanded offerings of our most popular courses on more campuses.

In 2022, Per Scholas will offer our AWS re/Start, Cybersecurity, and Software Engineering curriculum in more locations than ever before as we enroll more technologists in our cost-free training and continue to diversify the tech industry.  In our Dallas market, the new year will bring in more learners as we expand to train learners in Collin and Tarrant counties.  Our Per Scholas Charlotte campus is extending out to become Per Scholas North Carolina with a partnership with Wilkes Community College.  We will train 1,000 New Yorkers through 2022 throughout the five boroughs since we launched our satellite model in Staten Island and Queens.  Additionally, you can expect to see a cohort launched in our National Capital Region (NCR) campus that is designed to support women learners.  This cohort will feature 15 spots for female technologists to pursue a career in technology and launch in February 2022. Our Per Scholas NCR Managing Director Diane Duff spoke with Michaela Althouse at Technical.ly DC to discuss the cohort and how Per Scholas will advance women in technology with this training.  “A thriving wage is critical to being able to participate in the workforce,” Duff said. “I mean, particularly for women, if you are not making enough money to support your household, what are we talking about?” 

Stay tuned to learn more about the launch dates and locations of all of our cohorts and our admissions process by visiting our website.  Reach out to info@perscholas.org with any questions on our upcoming training as we train more learners than ever before in 2022!

Starting in February 2022, Per Scholas will launch a women-only cohort in our National Capital Region campus.  This will be the first women-only cohort since our start over 25 years ago and is a testament to our plans to diversify the tech industry.  Per Scholas NCR Managing Director, Diane Duff, mentioned, “this training is designed with women in mind, and with the goal of understanding the barriers women face entering the industry.”

With the Women in Apprenticeship and Nontraditional Occupations grant, Per Scholas has to opportunity to offer this program to bolster women in the tech workforce.  The training will be completely remote, hold 15 spots, and held from 9:30 am – 2:30 pm with additional tutoring and professional development hours available on the weekends.  If you or someone you know are interested in this women-only training, applications open on November 29.

 Per Scholas is excited for this opportunity to raise the percentage of women in tech from beyond 30% female.  Click here to learn more about the cohort and the effect it will have on women in tech with our feature in Technical.ly DC.

After nearly a year and a half of remote training, virtual camaraderie, and reminding people they’re on mute, Per Scholas campuses began opening their doors to welcome our learners back to in-person learning in July. Complete with social distancing and health and sanitizing protocols in place, Cincinnati, Columbus, and National Capital Region were the first of our seventeen campuses to host our cohorts in-person. This is the start of our beginning steps as we roll out an initiative to re-introduce our learners, national staff, and campus teams on-site. Don’t think we will forget what we’ve learned from the pandemic, though; Per Scholas mastered the art of remote training and will continue to use it to reach more individuals moving forward.  

The return to campus for our learners is an experience that won’t be taken for granted as we continue to monitor the health of those returning, wear masks, and provide sanitizer for all.  If there is one thing the pandemic and remote training taught us, it is that the resiliency of our learners and campus teams is unparalleled.  We know that our learners can take on anything—we’ve seen that from the many challenges learners overcome before even arriving at Per Scholas, throughout in-person training (pre-pandemic), and in the initiative and resilience everyone showed both when we went remote and now as we return to campus.

While it may have been great logging into Zoom from the comfort of home and wearing sweatpants as the bottoms of our professional attire, there is absolutely nothing that compares to the interaction and experience of in-person training at Per Scholas.  Per Scholas Cincinnati Managing Director Jay Dierig reflected that since returning, “Being back on-site has been a great experience for both our staff and learners. With tremendous effort and innovation, we made the pivot to deliver our courses in a remote environment, but there is nothing quite like the interaction, hands-on learning, and sense of community we can create with in-person experiences.”  Just as our learners will pave the way in the tech industry once they graduate, they will now pave the way for our organization as we transition back in-person for our national staff as well.  

The morale that in-person training has created is second to none after being virtual since March 2020. Jay Dierig has noticed that the learners and campus teams are thrilled to be back as they build career paths in technology and advance economic mobility.  “I’m delighted to be back in our beautiful building at Citylink and love to see the look of excitement on the faces of our learners each morning,” Jay mentioned.  “Providing a safe, inclusive, and inviting environment for our staff and learners will continue to be our top priority.” 

As we continue to welcome smiling faces back into our campuses across the country, we are eager to connect our diverse and skilled learners with leading businesses just as we have for the past 25 years. We’ll all miss reminding our colleagues they’re on mute at least once a day, but we think the trade off is worth it.  

As we mark one year since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic put tens of millions of Americans out of work, we’re starting to see signs of hope. But while vaccinations and reopenings suggest a return of normalcy, many of our most vulnerable community members risk being left behind. 

Through a generous partnership, Per Scholas and Google.org are working together to bring free immersive tech skills training and Google Career Certificate programming to 3,000+ BIPOC adults. This is a major contribution to Per Scholas’ goal of to propel 13,000+ diverse adults to a thriving wage by 2023.

Currently, for Black and Hispanic workers, the reported jobless rates remain significantly higher than the general population numbers, as they have been throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. And for many who were working low-wage jobs across leisure, retail and hospitality sectors, these jobs are not expected to come back. Meanwhile, demand for tech talent continues to rise, and employers across industries are paying a  renewed focus on filling open roles with diverse talent, including individuals from nontraditional educational backgrounds. 

Per Scholas and Google.org are providing individuals traditionally underrepresented in technology with the skills they need to meet these current labor demands, while working to ensure all alumni achieve a true thriving wage – enough to save money for retirement, invest in children’s education, or own a home – within two years of graduation. Through this grant, Google.org is providing free access for learners to its array of Google Career Certificates to 2,000+ Per Scholas alums [ register for IT Automation with Python today].

This work also encompasses support for Per Scholas’ Diverse by Design – which provides corporate leaders with the training and resources they need to recruit, retain, and cultivate diverse talent. Through solutions-driven conversations about diversity, equity, and inclusion within tech, DxD produces meaningful content that empowers C-suite leaders to make valuable and socially impactful business decisions, and provides access to sophisticated customized training and talent sourcing solutions.

Google’s own Stephanie LeBlanc-Godfrey, Global Head of Inclusion for Women of Color, recently participated in a Diverse by Design panel discussion, hosted by Per Scholas, titled the 140K: Women and the Pandemic in which we explored the unique challenges that COVID-19 has presented for women and the solutions tech companies are employing to address them.  Stephanie emphasized that, “It is our responsibility to make tech careers more accessible to women, and one clear solution to significantly accelerate that opportunity for women is through organizations like Per Scholas, which provide tuition-free tech-training, reducing the barriers of time and financial cost women traditionally face when they are trying to enter the tech industry.  This levels the playing field and makes access to tech career opportunities more equitable.”

This announcement builds on a five-year history with Google.org, which has supported local markets in New York  and Atlanta, and has already awarded Google Career Certificates to more than 1,000 Per Scholas learners who have completed in Google IT Support Professional and Google IT Automation. 

The powerful impact of the Google and Per Scholas tech training partnership comes to life through the experience of our graduates. Curtis Kirksey had been interested in getting into the tech industry for a while, but it wasn’t until he lost his sales job due to the COVID-19 pandemic that he realized it was time to pursue his dream career.  In his words, “the life-altering event” taught him that “mindset is crucial to one’s well-being,” and once he realized that, he began working on himself.  

Curtis enrolled in Per Scholas’ Network Support training program and, although attending a full-time remote class was extremely challenging, he managed to earn his CompTIA A+, CompTIA Net+, and Google IT Support certifications AND graduated as class Valedictorian. 

Curtis was in such high demand that he had several job offers when he graduated. He is currently employed full-time in the tech industry, earning significantly more than he did in his previous role in sales.

“Your opportunities are endless when it comes to this type of industry,” Curtis told WSB-TV Atlanta in a recent interview about his experience. He hopes to one day be chosen to work at the new Google site in Atlanta. “That would be a dream job to work for Google, and to know they are right here in my backyard,” Curtis said. “It gives me hope.”

Google.org’s support is helping propel students like Curtis to successful careers with thriving wages, while also helping Per Scholas advance racial and economic equity in the tech workforce, and create high-quality career pathways opportunities for thousands of diverse individuals who might otherwise never have been able to access them. 

An instructor with one of our learners, exploring the internal workings of a computer (pre-Covid).