By Laura Aka for WorkingNation.
Broadcast version by Shanteya Hudson for North Carolina News Service reporting for the WorkingNation-Public News Service Collaboration

After she graduated from college in 2018, Danielle Prioleau expected to be working in events planning. Then in 2020, the pandemic hit. “That made me rethink my career and changed my perspective because events is definitely something that you can’t really be online for – you have to be in person,” recalls Prioleau.

She was looking into tech boot camps, but was worried about the cost. “A lot of boot camps can be $10,000, which is as much as a car. I already have student debt, so that wasn’t necessarily the route I wanted to take.”

A friend told her about North Carolina-based Code the Dream which “offers free intensive training in software development to people from diverse low-income backgrounds.”

Prioleau – who lives in Maryland and had no previous thought about going into tech – says, “I applied for Code the Dream’s React course and I got in. That was just a crazy amazing moment.” She started taking courses in October 2021, finished the following March, and then became a Code the Dream apprentice in June of 2022.

Internal Support and Mentorship

Prioleau says support from the program’s staff has been impactful. She specifically points to Omer Yariv, a senior developer and mentor with the organization. “I don’t want to call him my rock but, essentially, he’s my rock.”

She continues, “I love Omer honestly so much just because I felt really connected to him. He was new in the senior developer role – just coming on into Code the Dream. I related to him because I was also new – not necessarily at Code the Dream, but as an apprentice.”

“He definitely helped me in lots of ways because this was all new for me. Honestly, I was just nervous even asking questions during scrum, which we had every day because I always thought, ‘I’m scared for them to know what I don’t know.’”

Yariv notes, “There’s more to the work than just knowing how to code. There’s knowing how to present your work, knowing not to be afraid to ask questions. In some cases, it’s knowing how to present your work in a resume or an interview. A lot of things that are beyond just being able to code.”

He adds, “Our job at Code the Dream is pretty much to help our apprentices find a better job. We want them to find another job and we want them to continue with their career. Not because we don’t love them, we do. Not because they’re not great, they are. But because we want them to have a real career.”

Yariv acknowledges Prioleau’s growth during her Code the Dream apprenticeship. “She started looking to get challenged, proactively asking to do things that are beyond what she was comfortable doing before.”

Opportunity for Outside Apprenticeship

“It’s well established that apprenticeship is a great way to build up a diverse workforce, not only ethnically and racially diverse, but also experientially diverse,” says Daisy Magnus-Aryitey, co-executive director, Code the Dream.

“However, it is extremely costly and resource-intensive for companies to build up their own apprenticeship because of the cost of the apprentices, their salary, et cetera, but also all of the resources and support around the apprenticeship department.”

Magnus-Aryitey continues, “Additionally when we’re talking about tech apprentices, they need support from senior developers. So, companies also have to figure in the cost of pulling senior developers off of projects in order to mentor these junior, starting-out folks in order to get them to the point where they can contribute.”

Because Code the Dream has its own apprenticeship program, Magnus-Aryitey says, “One thing that we really built up over the years is the ability to work with very junior talent, to bring them up, and to increase their skills, et cetera.”

“We know we can run an apprenticeship department extremely well, and what we wondered is ‘Can we do that for a company?’ Essentially run an apprenticeship in tandem where we provide the pipeline to talent, and we also provide the senior developer support needed to really grow their talent over time.”

Agreements were crafted to provide apprenticeships over the past year for Code the Dream participants with Cisco and SAS Institute.

Magnus-Aryitey explains, “Tandem apprentice partners contract with Code the Dream for the apprentices, oversight, and mentorship. This way they end up having one contract that covers the costs of all apprentices – who remain CTD employees until the partner chooses whether to make offers of permanent employment.”

She adds, “[The employers] get a simplified approach to launching a full-fledged apprenticeship program with robust support for apprentices.”

Real-World Experience

“The culmination of a year’s worth of discussions and work [with Code the Dream] is where the tandem apprenticeship came from,” explains Alex Boakye, vice president of solutions development, SAS Institute.

Boakye – who is also a Code the Dream board member – continues, “Eventually we landed on the fact that what would be good is if we could take [Code the Dream] apprentices after they’ve done the training, bring them into SAS so that we can introduce them to corporate culture, provide mentorship for them, teach them high-level coding skills that they wouldn’t have.”

“Then at the end of the year, we can do an assessment to figure out how well they acclimated to the corporate culture, look at metrics and how they’re performing against both interns and entry-level engineers that are coming in – and see if they can make a high impact.”

The Code the Dream apprentices started their yearlong SAS apprenticeships at the beginning of 2023. Boakye happily announces, “We started with 10 and we ended up hiring all 10.” All 10 –who completed their SAS apprenticeships in December – started their new jobs this month.

Prioleau explains she will continue the same work she has been doing as an apprentice with the guidance of the same manager. She says she will be translating internal SAS products for outside use by other companies. “We are writing the SAS products in React is because it is a more modern framework. We’re able to use less code and we’re able to use updated styling.”

She adds, “Nothing should visually look any different. It’s just from a coder’s view – should be more robust and should be able to be run quicker.”

Yariv is happy that all the apprentices have secured permanent jobs, recalling some struggled earlier with imposter syndrome. “’What is going on here? I can’t find my hands or my feet.’ And we are like, ‘That is normal. That happens to us, too. You’ll see that in a month, in two months from now, it won’t be an issue anymore. You’ll just know it.’”

“Being there with them and reflecting back that what they’re going through is normal, not just for apprentices, but for any developer – I think is part of the support that we could give.”

Boakye says the support from Code the Dream developers is a critical part of the process. “My view on this is they need a safe space to be able to go. That gives them a safe place to go and have a discussion. They can let their guards down and not feel like they’re being measured or tracked, or that they have to put up any facade.”

He notes, “I mentioned to the apprentices that we are a business. At the end of the day, we care about profit. To me, they are an investment that I am making and I believe that I’m going to get a return on that investment.”

Boakye adds, “I wanted to make sure that they knew, ‘Hey, we have you guys here because you do good work. We’re going to help you build your career.’ My hope for them is that they’re going to become the next leaders in the technology industry.”

“They’re going to go from doing their jobs or not even having the opportunity to be in tech to now making six figures,” says Boakye. “Personally, the way I love to make impactful changes in diversity is if we want to change communities and we want to change laws that are unjust, my view is change one person’s life at a time.”

What’s Next?

As the first group of SAS apprentices transitions into permanent employment, another group of 10 began their next chapter earlier this month – by starting their SAS apprenticeships.

Reflecting on the tandem apprenticeship model, Magnus-Aryitey acknowledges Dan Rearick, her co-executive director. “We work together on all big initiatives, especially this one!”

She says, “I’m so grateful for our partners who work with us to pilot this program. I’m so grateful to the team because it was a lot of work on our end to put things in place and starting something off is very, very difficult.”

She adds, “We saw this as a way to disrupt traditional hiring practices.”

Boakye notes, “I am hoping that after you put out this article, other company leaders will look at it and see that there is a path to doing this kind of work in their companies. And that the key thing is it’s beneficial to society at large.”

“We’re looking for the intersection of doing work that contributes to the world in general and to the communities that we live in, but also is profitable, right?”

Yariv – whose career has mostly been working at startup companies – says, “I don’t think I’ve ever worked at a company where the value was so powerful where you could see it on a daily basis.”

He continues, “Sitting with people and hearing their stories, seeing them get a job, seeing them go through that tandem apprenticeship, seeing how they become better – it’s heartwarming. And it is, for me personally, much more rewarding than product work.”

And Prioleau, one of SAS’s newest associate software developers, says, “Looking back, I definitely think there are specific people that have been placed in my journey to lay out the path for me – which is awesome to think about.”

She adds, “My dad tells me every day, ‘Danielle, can you see how much you’ve grown?’”


Laura Aka wrote this article for WorkingNation.


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For active-duty service members and veterans eyeing a college degree, the march to academic success just got easier. The University of North Carolina system now has a tool that simplifies the conversion of military expertise into university credits across 16 campuses.

Bradley Wrenn, program manager for military and veterans education with UNC, described the system's Military Equivalency System as a way to streamline what used to be a rigorous process for people looking to find out how much of their military service translates to a college degree.

"The real challenges fell in the students not really knowing where to submit the information. There wasn't really a system-wide mechanism for them to input their military training and experience information, and so they were doing it at the university level," Wrenn said.

He noted that there was inconsistency among universities regarding who provided information to potential students. Now, anyone with an American Council on Education joint services transcript can easily input their information to find out which courses they will receive credit for.

The impact of this initiative extends beyond individual students. North Carolina ranks as the fourth-largest state for military members, and Wrenn said the UNC System aims to leverage this tool to address critical workforce needs. By credentialing military members, Wrenn added they will have the opportunity to fill needs in high-demand fields such as health sciences, business, education, and STEM.

"We see these folks who are coming out of the military as being key to being able to fill those workforce needs by credentialing them in such a way that they're able to take those jobs because our end goal is not only to graduate our students and to credential them but to keep them here in the state, " Wrenn added.

There are about 7,000 course matches in the tool's database, but Wrenn says it will expand to include more courses. More than 21,000 military-affiliated students enrolled in UNC institutions, representing nearly 10% of the student population.

Boston University's Prison Education Program is celebrating its 50th anniversary, and is hoping to expand.

Students at Massachusetts Correctional Institution Norfolk and MCI Framingham are earning undergraduate certificates and Bachelor of Liberal Arts degrees, to reform their lives and find ways to give back to their communities upon release.

Program Director Mary Ellen Mastrorilli said it offers hope for a better self, and her students are eager to learn.

"They're highly motivated," said Mastrorilli. "They're not afraid to work hard. They do their assignments. They're just, in some ways, the ideal student."

Mastrorilli said there's a misconception that educating people in prison is being soft on crime, but research shows these programs reduce misconduct and cut the likelihood of recidivism nearly in half.

That may be due to the better job prospects and higher wages that formerly incarcerated people with education experience.

It's also one reason Mastrorilli said she hopes the program will expand - and why even more universities, including Tufts and Emerson, are growing their own prison initiatives, and giving students a second chance.

"The prison education classroom is a space where they get to claim their humanity and their dignity," said Mastrorilli. "And it's easy to understand how personal growth will come from that."

Students in Boston University's program have earned more than 400 bachelor's degrees in the past few decades alone.

Mastrorilli said the undergraduate certificate program has also become increasingly popular with people serving shorter sentences, and for those unsure if they can handle the degree program workload.

She said it's important to judge her students not by their crimes, but as human beings with unlocked potential.

Support for this reporting was provided by Lumina Foundation.

This summer, colleges and universities will have to comply with a new federal rule and not withhold students' transcripts over unpaid tuition and fees.

North Dakota officials see the movement as a boost to people pursuing new job skills. The U.S. Education Department said starting July 1, higher-ed institutions cannot refuse to turn over transcripts related to any course paid for by federal student loans or grants, which are sometimes prompted by overdue book fees or other school debt.

Lisa Johnson, vice chancellor of academic and student affairs for the North Dakota University System, said for a person looking to re-enroll or apply for a new job, overcoming such obstacles can be huge.

"If we're trying to attract returning adults, individuals who have 'stopped out,' this really has to be a part of your focus and the broader array of policies and procedures that we look at," Johnson contended.

North Dakota's system is not designed to issue partial transcripts. Johnson expects the state to honor releases for all situations involving an outstanding balance. A formal vote is expected this spring. She noted campuses would still have leeway to prevent a student from seeking new courses at their school over fears they would be taking on too much additional debt.

In those cases, Johnson pointed out a student can try to work with the campus on a repayment plan, or seek out opportunities at other schools, including certificate programs which may cost less. She added some North Dakota schools are exploring other ways to ease debt issues.

"Campuses are having preliminary discussions about waiving low levels of outstanding debt," Johnson emphasized. "Things like parking tickets."

Beyond wiping out minor balances, she noted schools within the North Dakota system are being proactive in working with former students looking to pay off their debt. She said it is better than relying on collection agencies tacking on additional fees and putting students in a more difficult spot.

Support for this reporting was provided by Lumina Foundation.