Promoting Diversity at The Tech Academy — Making Sure Everyone Has a Seat at the Table

PORTLAND, Ore. - Feb. 16, 2017 - PRLog -- An important question we've been asked a lot lately, and one we often ask ourselves as a company, is what are we doing to promote diversity at The Tech Academy? This is a significant and relevant question today, especially for educational organizations, and one that we try to answer with open arms and hearts. In tech, a traditionally homogenous field, it is important that diversity start in schools and programs that train the next generation of tech workers.

Our best tool in our attempt to diversify our student body is outreach. Since our open-enrollment course is not limited to a certain number of students, like a traditional college, our answer is not simply to enroll more students who belong to underrepresented communities. What we do is reach out to and attempt to partner with, or participate in, groups that represent the underrepresented. Some groups we enjoy working with are PDX Women in Tech and Hispanic Pros, and we're eagerly looking for more!

Outreach and partnership, especially in relation to diversity, doesn't come with a simple formula where we can simply plug in x and y to get z. The events we attend, participate in and put on come in different forms but all have the same goal: to encourage and inspire people of underrepresented communities to join (and stay in) the tech industry, inform them of tools and resources to learn and succeed, and ensure them that they have a seat at the table.

Our most recent event was a Code Retreat put on by PDX WIT hosted by The Tech Academy. A Code Retreat is an all-day event, led by a facilitator, where participants can sharpen their coding skills, hone in their specialties or learn something new. It's basically an all day hack-fest with awesome company there to help, support and encourage each other. The Tech Academy is no stranger to PDX WIT — PDX WIT's co-founder Megan Bigelow has done a Tech Talk at The Tech Academy and we've hosted other awesome events for the non-profit.

Diversity in the workplace, from entry level to management to executive level, is an important part of any successful organization. Not only is it important on a moral level to give people of any community an equal opportunity at success, which is paramount, but it is just plain good business. Diversity in the workplace has shown to improve a teams ability to handle conflict successfully, improve creativity and problem-solving abilities.

We here at The Tech Academy are excited for the future of our industry — a future where people look, are, and come from places that are a little bit more different.

The Tech Academy is a coding boot-camp where students study computer programming and web development. The curriculum is available both locally in Portland, Oregon or remotely online. Students learn many programming languages and skills, including: computer science fundamentals, HTML, CSS, Version/Source Control, Visual Studio, Databases, SQL, JavaScript, Python, C#, ASP.NET, Project Management and more. What sets The Tech Academy apart from other code schools is our open enrollment, self-paced program and employment rate.

For more information please visit learncodinganywhere.com