Blockchain: It’s All in the Academics
Blockchain is a new and upcoming technology that is gaining traction and widespread adoption. Being a technology in its infancy, but growing at a rapid rate, there is a high demand for blockchain engineers and developers. With this demand, we should see a supply of educational courses made available to the public, but that hasn’t happened.
As a former educator, when perusing the internet for blockchain courses, I was shocked to see the lack of quality options out there. Sure, IBM offers a blockchain course, but it’s a total of 6 hours and doesn’t get too nitty gritty with the details. Courses like these can be beneficial to those who want to get their foot in the door. However, to get quality engineers and developers, academia needs to jump on board the blockchain bandwagon. MIT, Stanford, and Oxford advertise their blockchain courses, but even these can be rather limiting. All three are schools exclusive and can be rather expensive!
Over the past 6 months, MIMIR has developed a working relationship with Saint Peter’s University, located in New Jersey. Saint Peters has been working diligently to educate themselves on the tech to add blockchain to their curriculum. This summer, the school added a blockchain course to their Computer and Information Science division’s catalog. Our very own CTO, Hunter Prendergast, has been working directly with their professors and even holding video lectures to assist in this endeavor.
MIMIR is also proud to announce that we have an intern working with us this summer from Saint Peters. While speaking with our intern, Rachele Dembowski,on why she’s interested in working with blockchain, she said, “I believe in this technology and right now there is a lot of negative press around it, but I think that comes from a general lack of understanding of what the tech is” We couldn’t agree more and are excited to work with Rachele to see if we can’t alleviate some of this confusion.
This kind of foresight and determination from academia, like what’s being seen at Saint Peter’s, is necessary for higher-education institutions to meet the high demand for blockchain engineers and developers. It should be a continuous goal of institutions and companies in the blockchain space to educate people on this tech. The truth of the matter is, there aren’t many people who have tried to tackle a new language or tech without someone there to hold their hand and mentor them every once in a while.
In my experience, mentors are those doing it for the love of education, not the need for money. I implore and encourage others to offer their expertise for the goal of bettering the space with well-rounded, well-educated engineers and developers. If we all give a little, the benefits could be huge!
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