Alexandra Liggins, left, and Alex Sejdinaj, co-founders of South Bend Code, stand together inside the South Bend Code offices in South Bend in September. The business is soon expanding to Goshen. Tribune Photo/ROBERT FRANKLIN
In the pilot program of South Bend Code School, students who had zero coding experience built 23 web applications in five weeks to tackle real problems. Since then, hundreds of students have learned to write computer code through the business, which has expanded to Fort Wayne and will soon be in Goshen.
South Bend Code School is growing and so is its recognition.
Alexandra Liggins and Alex Sejdinaj founded the school 2 1/2 years ago. The two discovered they, along with Chris Frederick, were trying to do the same thing —teach young people how to use computer languages to make the machines do cool things.
As a senior English major at the University of Notre Dame, Liggins discovered while tutoring high school students that many didn’t feel they had opportunities beyond high school. She knew coding was a skill that doesn’t require a college degree. So, “I started teaching myself to code,” she said.
Sejdinaj had grown up in the area, gotten a bachelor’s degree at Indiana University in recording arts and moved to Nashville. He fell into coding. “I started to teach myself and couldn’t get enough of it,” he said. He landed an information technology job at Notre Dame, but wanted to get more involved.
The two worked together at establishing the code school as a business. So far, 200 students have taken a full class and 700 more have participated in an educational activity.
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