With a full-time job and two teenagers at home, Jamie Brooks doesn’t have much time to spare.
After going straight into the workforce after high school, Brooks took the long road to college, enrolling when she felt her career had plateaued. Upon graduating with a bachelor’s degree, she expected to find magic.
“I only went so far before I was stuck, so I got my bachelors and no magic happened,” she said. “I didn’t have the magical, amazing job and I got more frustrated.”
After landing at a local software company as an executive assistant, Brooks finally felt that spark. She wanted to expand her skills into a tech-focused role.
So, when the opportunity to join the University of Denver’s Women’s Coding Boot Camp presented itself, she jumped at it.
“I wanted to do the boot camp to change the trajectory of my life,” she said.
Brooks, along with 20 other classmates, recently graduated from the 24-week part-time program. This is the first cohort to complete the program, and DU will enroll another class in April.
“I can’t wait to get a job, so I can code every day.”
“This is a great way to get folks in and out fairly quickly to the workforce and give them skills that they can use to shift their career,” Renae Jacob, Executive Director of DU's Center for Professional Development, said.
As part of the women’s only boot camp, students attend two weeknight classes from 6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. and a Saturday class from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
This program is part of a larger boot camp effort at DU that includes part-time and full-time coding, data analytics and cybersecurity programs.
The programs are offered in partnership with national workforce accelerator Trilogy Education and have graduated over 400 students already who now work at major companies like Microsoft, Comcast, Marketo, Amazon and VMWare.
In gathering this group of aspiring coders together, women’s boot camp teacher Sarah Cullen said she hopes to see a shift in the gender breakdown of technology professionals.
“I think it’s pretty apparent that there is a great deal of gender inequality,” Cullen said of the coding scene. “I’m still used to being the only woman on a development team.”
Cullen has been interested in coding since high school and has held various positions in web development over her career. She’s hopeful this new generation of women coders will move the needle and create a strong female coding community.
“I hope that they continue to preserve this sense of community we fostered for them. Part of me getting to where I am, is due to maintaining a positive network and I hope they’ll continue to code together,” she said.
Over the course of the 24-week program, the students worked on three pillar projects, learning a variety of different coding materials, including HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, jQuery, Bootstrap and much more.
Brooks worked with classmates Tina Li and Denise Stark on a variety of projects, developing a strong bond along the way.
“I think Jamie, Denise and I have talked every day since the program,” Li said. “I’m really grateful that I did it and feel very appreciative of the experience.”
During the class, the trio worked on a project to develop an app that allows victims of sexual assault in Colorado to search for a certified nurse examiner. The app, named Project SANE, tested the groups’ coding and problem-solving skills.
“It was really challenging but gratifying when we got it done, our work as a team was wonderful. We really bonded throughout all of it,” Li said.
“We worked our butts off, every little thing you got to work was so rewarding and so amazing,” Stark said.
Although the course is now complete, the team said they still plan on working on the app while searching for full-time jobs in coding.
Cullen said she came away thoroughly impressed with the impacts of the projects her students were working on, in addition to their growth in coding.
“I think I’ve seen from this group of women a great level of social conscious of the projects they’ve built out,” she said.
As the program enters its second iteration in April, Cullen said the curriculum will build off what the staff learned the first time around. Namely, she wants to get students into coding projects quicker.
“What we plan to do next time is be smarter, we have plans to get students to hit the ground running faster,” she said.
On the university’s end, Jacob said they’re constantly looking to add new boot camps to their offerings, building on the model’s success.
Brooks, Li and Stark all laughed at some of the initial struggles they faced in entering the boot camp, but universally agreed the pain was worth the gain.
“I would definitely tell somebody, if you’re going to do it, do it all the way,” Brooks said. “It consumes every minute that you have, but it’s so worth it and it’s life-changing.”
Now that she’s completed the boot camp, Stark, a stay-at-home mom, is excited for what the future holds.
“I can’t wait to get a job, so I can code every day,” she said.
