Students in the Meridian Public School district will be able to jumpstart a career while in high school through a new partnership.

A new program from C-Spire, The C-Spire Tech Movement Initiative, was announced Monday morning in the Meridian High School auditorium. A partnership among C-Spire, Mississippi State University Center for Cyber Education, Mississippi Department of Education, Meridian Community College, and Meridian Public School District will give students an opportunity to gain skills in computer science while helping to meet the demand of computer science jobs.

“We are excited to be part of this program, so students can get the training they need for the workforce,” said Holli Cobb, ninth grade counselor at Meridian High School.

According to C-Spire, there are more than 500,000 open computer science jobs and 60,000 computer science graduates each year in the United States. The starting salary for computer science jobs is $50,000 a year and is expected to grow to 24 percent by 2026, according to C-Spire.

“We are preparing students for jobs that have not been created yet,” Rob Smith, director of Ross Collins Technical and Career Center, said.

The goal of the program is to increase the number of skilled workers with computer science knowledge and eventually meet the need for workers, said Carla Lewis, chief information officer of C-Spire. The company approached the school district with the idea of a partnership, Lewis said.

The pilot program will begin with 10th and 11th-grade students during the 2019-2020 school year. Currently, computer science is being taught to students in the ninth grade at Ross Collins to gauge their interest.

Students in the pilot program will take four courses during their last two years of high school and take six classes at a community college, helping them earn up to at least 30 college credits or an associate’s degree. Basic concepts in computer science and some computer programming languages such as SQL and Python are examples of classes students could take through dual enrollment.

After the 11th grade, students will have the opportunity to go to a summer camp and the following summer they will have internship opportunities. The goal is to have students graduating and be qualified for high paying jobs or to prepare them for college.

“This is not just for those advanced-placement-type students. You don’t have to have the 3.8 and a 4.0 to get into the program; this is for people who are highly motivated and see themselves succeeding in this particular career path, Lori Smith, college and career planning coordinator with MCC, said.

Betsey Smith, director of Research & Curriculum Unit with MSU-Starkville, said she hopes that if students get a feel for the program they can decide if they want to study this as a career or not. Not all students will like computer science but it gives them an opportunity to gain skills for the future, Smith said.

Lewis said no matter how much she talks about diversity, women and minorities are still underserved in computer science and other STEM-related careers.

Reaching students at a younger age can change that outlook, Lewis said.

With the pilot program starting in Meridian schools, Lewis said she hopes it will eventually become available across the state.