Coding school offers free scholarship to women, gender minorities

Coding school offers free scholarship to women, gender minorities
The scholarship is available to women, including those who identify as genderqueer and nonbinary, for Grand Circus’s July and October 2020 programs. <strong>Courtesy Grand Circus</strong>

Grand Circus and the National Center for Women and Information Technology are offering a free coding scholarship to women and gender minorities.

The scholarship is available to women, including those who identify as genderqueer and nonbinary, for Grand Circus’s July and October 2020 programs.

Grand Circus, with coding boot camps in Grand Rapids and Detroit, has graduated over 1,600 students since 2015 and reported an 89.1% job placement rate for graduates.

The numbers for women representation in tech, however, are abysmal, said Amanda Metes, director of marketing for Grand Circus.

“Women comprise 47% of the overall workforce and only hold 25% of computing roles nationwide,” Metes said. “Many of those computing roles are not in development.”

Additionally, only 3% of computing-related jobs are held by Black women, 6% are held by Asian women and 2% are held by Hispanic women, Metes said.

The deadline to enroll in the 2020 July coding boot camp is July 3. This scholarship offers fully paid tuition courtesy of NCWIT’s Digital Skills Initiative. There are no income parameters for this scholarship.

The scholarship is a continuation of Grand Circus’s commitment toward advancing diverse representation in technology, including initiatives like Develop(HER) and the Grand Circus diversity scholarship.

Metes also encouraged women leaders in tech to get involved in Grand Circus’s coding boot camps by becoming a mentor for students, serving as a panelist for class discussions or just using their platforms to create visibility for the program.