CodeMontana Surpasses 1,000-Student Goal, Sets New Goal at 5,000 Students Participating by Spring 2015

Momentum continues to build for high-tech education in Montana

February 17, 2014 Bozeman – CodeMontana.org announced today that the statewide program launched in September 2013 has surpassed its one year goal of 1,000 students in just five months with 1,050 students already participating. The program is designed to encourage Montana high school students to learn computer programming. In addition it has created a groundswell of statewide momentum to prepare Montana young people for high-paying jobs here in the state. The CodeMontana.org founders have set a new and more ambitious goal of 5,000 Montana high school students participating in CodeMontana.org by the spring of 2015.

Over 400 high-paying high-tech jobs are created each year in Montana with starting salaries of $45K – $85K, but many of these jobs are left unfilled because not enough Montana young people are pursuing computer science. Compounding the problem, 9 out of 10 high schools nationally (and most high schools in Montana) do not even offer computer-programming classes. CodeMontana.org’s 1,050 participants are high school students from every corner of the state with more than 140 separate communities represented.

CodeMontana.org has become a rallying point for efforts statewide to increase computer science education, including:

Montana Tech is now offering $160,000 in scholarships for Montana students who complete CodeMontana.org to pursue computer science degrees. http://cs.mtech.edu/codemt

The University of Montana recently raised over $90,000 in scholarships for Montana students wishing to study computer science. http://www.cs.umt.edu/scholarships/

Montana State University Computer Science Department representatives are visiting 50 Montana high schools this year with an engaging robotics program to interest kids in pursuing computer science degrees in college. http://www.looneytherobot.com

A new class entitled The Joy and Beauty of Computing is being taught this semester at Bozeman High School and will be offered to STEM teachers statewide via a MSU summer training program during the summer of 2014.

High school teachers and administrators across the state have encouraged their students to participate in CodeMontana.org and in some cases incorporated the curriculum into their classrooms. These are just a few examples:

In Bozeman, CodeMontana.org is used in a class of about 20 students 5 days per week as the primary curriculum.

In Reed Point, all of the high school students were encouraged to sign up for CodeMontana.org if they had interest.

In Eureka, CodeMontana.org was introduced to about 450 middle school and high school students via a general assembly.

Businesses have also jumped on board. OnXMaps, a Missoula-based technology firm most recently ran a fundraising event that generated over $3,000 to help underwrite the CodeMontana.org program.

One CodeMontana.org participant recently penned this note of thanks, "I would like to personally extend my gratitude to everyone at CodeMontana for the work that you do and for giving me a medium to express myself. Computer science programs mean so much going forward and the scarcity of them gives your mission so much more meaning. Keep up the great work."

Rob Irizarry, CodeMontana co-founder, said, "It’s been incredible to watch the program grow. What we thought would take a year happened in just five months, with many of the students having already completed the core curriculum and starting the next stage of their career development."

Greg Gianforte, CodeMontana’s other founder, said, "I am thrilled with CodeMontana beating our ambitious goal of 1,000 students studying computer science in Montana. Now on to the goal of 5,000 students!"

Montana Programmers (www.montanaprogrammers.org) and the Montana Web Developers and Designers (http://www.mtwda.org/) continue to volunteer their time to coach CodeMontana participants and have graded over 30,000 assignments completed so far by students. These self-organized and totally bootstrapped grassroots organizations consist of hundreds of computer programmers and web developers statewide that make their living doing software development.

CodeMontana is a free program for all Montana high school students. Participants access an engaging, self-paced online curriculum developed by two Stanford computer science graduates that teaches them the basics of software development. The students compete for $10,000 of prizes while learning how to program.

Interested students should sign up at the http://www.CodeMontana.org web site. Each student will have unlimited access to the on-line curriculum for 90 days after sign-up. Prizes will be awarded monthly based on progress with the curriculum.

To learn more or to sign up visit http://www.CodeMontana.org.