20 Rock Star Mentors, 20 Eager Students, 1,000 Hours of Community Contributions

The second edition of the Drupal Career Starter Program kicked off last week with 20 out-of-work, eager IT professionals looking to jumpstart a new career in Drupal. They’re looking forward to spending 10 weeks learning the fundamentals of Drupal in the classroom, working their way up the Drupal Ladder during their lab hours, and transitioning into a paid internship with one of our Work Experience (WE) Drupal hosts. As if that wasn’t enough to jump-start a Drupal career, we’ve also matched each student with a DrupalEasy Community Mentor that will help guide the student in their 5 mandatory hours of community contributions each week. 20 students and mentors multiplied by 5 hours per week for 10 weeks equals 1,000 hours of community contributions.

We’ve always felt that an individual’s level of Drupal success is directly proportional to their community involvement. Those who don’t leverage the networking and knowledge transfer opportunities of the community are at a distinct disadvantage. It is the DCSP’s goal to give the student every possible advantage from the very start - and this means instilling a strong appreciation for our community.

We were extremely fortunate in the quality and quantity of mentors that applied to be part of this program. Late last week, we completed the matching process of students to mentors and are happy to report the mentors are:

• Brandon Morrison (Brandonian)
• Christian Häusler (corvus_ch)
• Don VanDemark (caelon)
• Emma Jane Hogbin (emmajane )
• Greg Knaddison (greggles)
• Jake Strawn (himerus)
• Joachim Noreiko (joachim )
• John Learned (JCL324)
• Kay VanValkenburgh (kay_v)
• Kevin Bridges (cyberswat)
• Lev Tsypin (levelos )
• Sascha Grossenbacher (Berdir)
• Ted Bowman (tedbow)
• Yuriy Gerasimov (ygerasimov)

Each mentor has committed to spending 1-2 hours per week working directly with their student, helping to teach them effective ways of contributing back to the community. We are encouraging mentors to have students work with modules and/or themes that are of interest to both the mentor and the student, in hopes of providing some reverse karma to the mentors. Ideally, our students will use this opportunity to dive deep into a Drupal project and continue contributing long after they graduate from the DCSP.

As the students progress over the course of the DCSP, we’ll be sure to keep everyone updated on their progress and contributions to the community. We can’t wait to see our future Drupal rock stars develop!