Per Scholas: Teaching World Class Technology Training

Per Scholas focuses on teaching transformative technology and prepares students to become customer-oriented professionals who are able to empathize with their clients.

Guy Burnham’s first exposure to IT came while enrolled in an associate’s program at Cincinnati State. After working on several help desk tasks for the school, he realized tech came naturally to him, and that he enjoyed the work. Burnham proceeded onto several years contracting in the security investigations industry, but due to personal hardships and lack of work, he found himself without a job to support himself. 

Last April, while watching television one Sunday morning, Burnham happened upon Per Scholas, a national nonprofit that provides rigorous and free technology training to communities across the United States, including Greater Cincinnati.The course was intensive and challenging and required Burnham to master skills that were in-demand. Per Scholas training was hands on, intensive, professional and creative. Burnham recalls his breakthrough moment. About halfway through the course, the class learned about the importance of systems backups, and how to perform them. Determined to master the material, he went home and practiced backing up his own hard drive. Then, the very next week, his personal computer crashed. Panicked because he’d potentially lost several weeks worth of work, Burnham took a deep breath, and using the knowledge he’d learned in class, figured out how to retrieve his data and restore his entire computer system on his own.

From that point on, Burnham realized that nothing would phase him. "It gave me a confidence level that was out of this world." Burnham proudly used this story when talking to potential employers, demonstrating that he has the capacity to empathize with clients. "I walked away from Per Scholas with nothing but excitement. I may not know everything about IT, but I can demonstrate to an employer that I have the willingness and I am confident in what I have learned."

"Greater Cincinnati employers are desperate for tech talent – and the industry demands ready-to-work and customer-oriented professionals," says Paul Cashen, managing director of Per Scholas Cincinnati. "We partner directly with employers to build an informed curriculum that teaches students what they need to know for a job in IT." 

Thrive Impact Sourcing, explains, "We believe the creation of intensive training opportunities will provide a much-needed talent pool to the Greater Cincinnati area, allowing us to engage with adults who are unemployed or in low-wage positions and looking for a career path." 

Last year, Per Scholas launched a new software testing training course in partnership with Thrive Impact Sourcing. The collaboration has succeeded in preparing individuals from the Greater Cincinnati region for open positions as quality assurance software testers, in addition to the existing IT Support course that Per Scholas offers. 

Like many of his fellow alumni, Burnham recently landed his first IT job as an ITL (Intergrated Testing and Learning) Administrator at Mt. Auburn International Academy, a tuition-free, public K-12 charter school in Cincinnati – part of a global educational network that has an active presence in 20 countries on five continents. In this role, he sets up and maintains critical hardware and software systems for the school. Burnham has also considered meshing his tech skills with his criminal justice background in pursuit of a career in cyberlaw – a field he sees is becoming more important on a daily basis, noting "everything now is digital, and if you don’t protect this infrastructure, it can have a really bad end result."

To learn more about Per Scholas, visit www. perscholas.org.