Software Engineering Pilot Program Launches At 20 NYC Schools

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Dennis M. Walcott announced today, at the High School of Telecommunication Arts and Technology in Brooklyn, that the Software Engineering Pilot program will be launching at 20 public schools in New York City beginning this fall. The pilot program will offer an extensive computer science and software engineering curriculum to over 1000 students.

The Software Engineering Pilot program will help prepare middle school and high school students for college as well as careers in the evergrowing technology field. Mayor Bloomberg hopes that this program will be available for 3,500 students by 2016. He said, "We know it's vital to prepare our children to succeed in an increasingly technology-centered economy and the Software Engineering Pilot will help us do just that."

Chancellor Walcott said, "The Software Engineering Pilot will provide students with the foundational skills they need to compete for high-paying, career track jobs in a variety of professional fields." Software engineering is a very in-demand field, with companies finding it challenging to locate programmers and engineers equipped for the business. Mike Nolet, Co-founder and CTO of AppNexus commented on the challenges the company faces when hiring programmers and engineers. He praised Mayor Bloomberg for launching this program and stated that "These students will surely benefit from learning computer science, and we will be hiring them as soon as possible!"

For the first year of the program, the core classes will be computer programming, embedded electronics, web design and programming, e-textiles, robotics, and mobile computing. There will also be elective classes, including: digital fabrication, 3-D printing, and animation. The curriculum will continue to develop as the program gains more success and support.

These are the 20 schools that were chosen to participate in the Software Engineering Pilot program:

[via NYC]