Students train at an Iron Yard class in Austin, Texas.
The Iron Yard coding school will launch its Little Rock classes on Monday from the Museum Center in the River Market District.
The school will begin with three-month courses devoted to .NET and front-end engineering. Campus director Mary Dunlap says classes are full. Ultimately, the Iron Yard plans to add rails engineering, mobile engineering and kids’ classes to its Little Rock cirriculum.
The Iron Yard is located on the fourth floor of the Museum Center in space once used by former U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor. Its expansion to Little Rock was announced in January.
Little Rock instructors are Daniel Pollock, a former senior developer for Arkansas.gov, who will teach .NET engineering, and Ryan Tablada, who will lead the front-end engineering class. Tablada is a former senior developer for an agency in Nashville, Tennessee.
Arkansas serial entrepreneur/investor Kristian Andersen said the Iron Yard was a big “get” for Little Rock and addresses the state’s lack of homegrown technical talent needed to help staff the growing number of emerging tech startups.
“The Iron Yard is the largest coding academy in the U.S. and arguably the most successful,” he told Arkansas Business earlier this year. “Getting it in Little Rock is a seminal moment for the state. The Iron Yard will fill huge gaps in Arkansas. We don’t have enough tech talent, and it will fill that need while creating lots of opportunity for upward mobility.”
Andersen teamed with Innovate Arkansas to recruit Iron Yard founder Peter Barth to Little Rock. Barth liked what he saw, and said he foresees expansion into northwest Arkansas as well. The Iron Yard has locations in 19 cities across the U.S. and recently added a 20th in London, England.
In addition to helping supply talent for local tech startups, the Iron Yard serves to help staff local corporations, Barth said. He said Iron Yard schools have a 96 percent graduation rate and all graduates have found good jobs with higher-than-average salaries within three months, he noted.
Most Iron Yard students are mid-career, and a coding background isn’t necessary to enroll.
Dunlap, a University of Central Arkansas graduate who worked at Agency 501 in Little Rock before joining the Iron Yard team, said the response in Little Rock has been strong.
“The response and the amount of support we’ve received locally has been incredible,” she said. “And that’s from technical and non-technical sources alike, startups and large corporations. I’ve been very impressed and thankful for all the support.”
Dunlap said the Little Rock branch would add one more course in the fall, and that the class offered would depend on “where the jobs are.”
“It all depends on the job market,” she said.
Iron Yard classes are intensive and can require roughly 60 hours a week from students, Barth said.
Tuition is $12,000 per course but financial assistance is available. More information is available here.
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