Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

NATCHEZ — A ribbon-cutting celebration was held Tuesday morning for the start of a coding school now offered at Copiah Lincoln Community College’s Natchez Campus that is free to all students thanks to the non-profit Mississippi Coding Academies.

Natchez is the newest of five Mississippi Coding Academies started since the organization was founded in 2017. Other campuses are in Clarksdale, Columbus, Biloxi and the Coding Academy headquarters in Jackson.

In addition to celebrating a ribbon cutting for the new Mississippi Coding Academy program offered at Co-Lin Natchez, the academy also announced Tuesday an opportunity for online courses.

Like the six-month coding class offered at Co-Lin, the three-month online class called “Workforce 360” is also free of charge through the non-profit.

The course is a self-paced program with instructor check-ins and hands-on projects designed as a gateway to technical careers in high-demand fields such as AI, cybersecurity, IT support, web development and digital literacy. It is open to high schoolers in 11th and 12th grades on up, GED candidates, military or veterans looking to enter the civilian workforce, incarcerated individuals preparing for re-entry to society or anyone looking for a technology career.

To learn more about this and other classes offered, visit mscoding.org.

Since being founded in 2017, Mississippi Coding Academies has seen 328 graduates, 85 percent of which are currently working in technological careers, said Executive Director Bob Buseck. Additionally, 70 percent of the Coding Academy graduates identify as African American and 30 percent identify as female, “which is unheard of” in the technical industry, he said.

The first class of the Natchez coding academy also attended Tuesday’s celebration, which includes mostly women and one man, he said.

“We are specializing in emerging technology that is at the top of all jobs in the world, right here. We’re super excited about that,” Buseck said.

The non-profit aims to “bridge the digital divide in Mississippi” by offering easy access to high-quality technology education with a focus on underrepresented communities.

Coding Academies Chairman and CEO Mike Forster, who is also one of the founders of Mississippi Coding Academies in Jackson and Columbus, said he never envisioned the impact it would have.

“From that small beginning, we have now graduated more than 300 young people and one grandmother from our program,” he said. “If you do a little math on that, the impact of those 300 or so is between $15 to $20 million in the State of Mississippi’s economy. We like to think we are hand and glove with workforce development goals and objectives in the State of Mississippi. We’re just one more arrow in the quiver, but we think we’re an important arrow.”

Forster thanked Natchez Mayor Dan Gibson and the Natchez Board of Aldermen for its acquisition of a Delta Regional Authority grant for $75,000, which provided the seed money for the new academy. He also thanked the Adams County Board of Supervisors, Co-Lin and Alcorn State University for their support, adding “It really makes a difference.”

Dr. Pernell Goodwin, Vice President of Co-Lin Natchez, said “My life’s mission is to bring world-class education to my own backyard and with this partnership with Mississippi Coding Academies we are doing just that.”

Gibson said that the coding academy is just the beginning of an evolving range of workforce development opportunities in Natchez.

“This academy is going to allow people in our community to take advantage of a free education where after just a few months of in-depth study, these graduates, whether they’re 18 or 84 and all ages in between, will be able to get jobs that in many cases out earn a college graduate,” he said. “And this is a free program now available here in Natchez as of today.”