Calgary library offers tech training to launch people into new careers in 6 months

A new educational tenant at Calgary's Central Library says it will provide tech training that could help people change career direction in as little as six months.

The downtown library will offer third-floor space to InceptionU to provide training in back-end and front-end development work for positions known as full stack developers.

Founder Greg Hart says the private school will offer the six-month program to about 35 students starting Monday.He says it's about getting the skills for a job in the fast-moving digital world.

People from all walks of life

"The first program we ran, which is wrapping up this month, we had people from all walks of life, we had people who had full degrees doing technology work. We had other people who never coded a lineever in their lives," Hart said.

"We had one guy who had worked in an oil field job as an operator, lost his job, hadn't any formal schooling after high school, came into our program and three months inside that program, he was hired full time as a software developer at a really good salary."

Julia Pulwicki was in the first program offered. She is about to graduate with a job waiting for her in app development.

"We just dive right in and learn on the fly and through our mistakes. That's really what the selling point for me was, for sure," Pulwicki said.

Hart says they've also worked with students like a former dentist and another with a doctorate degree.

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The six-month program costs about $13,500 including subsidies from the provincial and federal governments. Some students, depending on government-set eligibility, could receive fully subsidized tuition.

There's also a free, introductory program offered at other branches of the Calgary library and the plan is to expand programming across the city.

• InceptionU CEO Greg Hart talks about the possibilities of a new Central Library partnership:

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