2019-2020 Annual Report Details Coder Successes, New Initiatives
With the certification of 29 new coders this year, the Mississippi Coding Academies has published its 2019-2020 Annual Report, detailing the 80 adults who have gone through the 11-month program in Jackson and the Golden Triangle to become full-stack coders.
The year began with the Mississippi Coding Academies’ transition to remote learning and evaluations because of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, coders were introduced to new tools and learned new skills, building familiarity with tools such as Discord, Microsoft Teams, Slack and Google Classroom.
By the end of the summer, not only had 29 new coders been certified, but eight had been placed already with the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, Babel Street, Peak Solutions and others, with an average starting salary of $40,775. That’s despite the pandemic and the pressure it has put on the job market. Overall, the average salary for hires from our program is $37,864, based on a survey of 43 graduates over three years.
Along with our coder success in 2020, calendar year 2019 concluded our COMCAST Veterans Code pilot program, where 14 participants earned a certificate for front-end coding and another seven received certification for back-end coding. Five veteran coders achieved the full-stack certification equivalent to the Mississippi Coding Academies’ full-time program.
Finally, this year saw us launch two new programs—one grant-funded and one for-profit. A USDA grant for remote learning helped launched our TechShare program, which aims to make our coding instruction available to more coders throughout the state, even if they aren’t able to commute to a physical Academy. We also launched MS CodeWorks this year, which offers contract coding services to local companies and organizations while employing our recent coders and giving them more experience.
We are so proud of our instructors and the young coders we’ve certified and who are now pursuing careers in technology. Attached is the annual report.
