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Virginia Tech to Offer Data Analytics Boot Camp

Today’s job market offers more than 600,000 positions for data analysts according to Shelly Jobst,

Shelly Jobst is Director of Continuing and Professional Education at Virginia Tech
Virginia Tech
Shelly Jobst is Director of Continuing and Professional Education at Virginia Tech

director of continuing and professional education at Virginia Tech.

“Companies are collecting a tremendous amount of information to help them make informed decisions, and they need people who can organize it, analyze it, sometimes put it in a visual format, and just make sense of the findings from all of that data.”

The pay is good – the median salary $100,000, so Tech has organized a data analytics boot camp with live, online instruction two nights a week and a half day on Saturdays for 26 weeks. The deadline to apply is September 28th, and applicants will be assessed to make sure the program is right for them.

“It’s going to have to be somebody who’s interested in solving a puzzle, figuring out how you can look at data in different ways and putting it in charts and graphs, but it’s open to anybody,” Jobst says.

The cost is just under $12,000, butscholarships are available, and participants will get a lot of help in finding a job when boot camp is done.

“Students who enroll in our boot camp are going to have a dedicated career counselor," Jobst explains . "We establish relationships with companies and host job fairs near the conclusion of the course, and our students are given the opportunity at that point to network and showcase their skills and the portfolio that they’ve developed throughout the course.” :

She adds that demand for data analysts is projected to grow 20% over the next ten years. For more information go to bootcamp.cpe.vt.edu

Updated: September 12, 2021 at 7:19 PM EDT
Editor's Note: Radio IQ is a service of Virginia Tech.
Sandy Hausman is Radio IQ's Charlottesville Bureau Chief