Page 10 - Campus Technology, January/February 2019

STEM EDUCATION dian schaffhauser Why Build a Boot Camp?
Ever-increasing numbers of universities and colleges are teaming up with boot camps to deliver tech training. Does your campus need one too?
WHEN DOUG SCHMIDT persuaded his institution to sign on with Trilogy Education Services to launch what has become known as the Vanderbilt University Coding Boot Camp, he considered it one more step forward in a 16-year effort to help improve the technology economy in Nashville, where the university is located. As this professor of computer science and co-director of the Vanderbilt Data Sciences Institute noted, everywhere else that he’s lived, worked and taught — Southern California, Northern California, Virginia, St. Louis, Maryland — has “had a really thriving tech ecosystem.” In Nashville, however, small companies, primarily in healthcare, have dominated the tech scene, making for limited opportunities for the school’s graduates who might want to stick around.
“Getting more workers here with technical skills makes it easier for companies to move here because they can find a workforce — which in turn makes it more credible for good tech people to move here because the companies are here,” Schmidt explained. And while Vanderbilt has grown its computer science program to about 550 majors and 150 minors a year, it’s still inadequate for the needs of a city with between 3,000 and 4,000 unfilled tech jobs.4
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CAMPUS TECHNOLOGY | January/February 2019
Vanderbilt’s Coding Boot Camp
Vanderbilt University Coding Boot Camp