University of Wisconsin Extended Campus: Find Top Courses & Training Locations

This program offers career-planning help, including a dedicated Profile Coach and Career Director, a free tutor network, and soft skills training. In 24 weeks, students will immerse themselves in web development and data analytics. They will develop the skills needed to become a software or web developer and create a portfolio of high quality work to show future employers.

The venerable University of Wisconsin dates back to 1848, the year Wisconsin became a state. Its flagship campus remains located at Madison, but the subsequent development of the university has been strongly influenced by the so-called “Wisconsin Idea,” formulated in 1904 by UW-Madison president Charles van Hise: “I shall never be content until the beneficent influence of the University reaches every home in the state.”

The Wisconsin Idea led to the development of what has become the University of Wisconsin System, which combines research universities, four-year institutions, and branch campuses throughout the state, and which welcomes upwards of 174,000 students annually. The Wisconsin Idea came also to encompass an Extension division that brought the university to every county in the state. After several administrative realignments, the extension division has rematerialized as the University of Wisconsin Extended Campus, the latest embodiment of the Wisconsin Idea. Partnering with all of the UW campuses, UW Extended Campus seeks to “develop and deliver programs and courses so learners of all ages can reach their personal and professional goals.” Bootcamp programs in coding and data science are part of that mission.

UW also offers a coding bootcamp through the Milwaukee campus’s School of Continuing Education. The School of Continuing Education is the largest provider of professional development courses in southeastern Wisconsin and serves more than 15,000 participants each year through over 1,000 different programs.

The University of Wisconsin Bootcamps are offered in collaboration with Trilogy Education Services. Trilogy is dedicated to bridging the skills gap that currently hampers the professional development of a large swath of the American workforce by offering intensive courses in coding and other tech-sector subjects in conjunction with several major American universities.

School Locations

The University of Wisconsin System consists of two major research universities (Madison and Milwaukee), eleven further degree-granting universities, and thirteen freshman-and-sophomore branch campuses. In addition to those, the Extended Campus brings the University throughout the state and beyond.

The coding and data science bootcamps offered through the Milwaukee and Extended Campuses are all conducted online in virtual classrooms.

Subjects Taught at University of Wisconsin Extended Campus

The bootcamps offered by the University of Wisconsin through its Milwaukee and Extended Campuses are 24-week part-time courses that meet two evenings a week and on Saturdays. In addition to the classroom time, students can anticipate 20 hours of homework and study time if they are to fulfill the class requirements successfully.

If prospective students wish to compare the UW Extended Campus bootcamps with other available options in the area and online, they can consult the Classes Near Me tool provided by Noble Desktop. It contains valuable information about the available coding bootcamps and data science bootcamps.

What Classes Are Available?

UW’s Extended Campus offers two bootcamps: one in coding and the other in data science. UW-Milwaukee offers only one, in coding.

The coding bootcamps teach students to become web developers through a dynamic full stack curriculum. The course begins by teaching students to use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to create a mobile-friendly website for a small business. Students will also start building their portfolios and posting them to GitHub. The course next turns to full stack development, including MySQL, SequelizeORM, and the construction of Node/Express servers. Class projects include building an employee directory for a rapidly expanding startup. The program continues by teaching the skills required to optimize applications. Students are then shown how to use React, NoSQL, and MERN in the course’s final project, an app for an outdoor food festival.

Although that concludes the 24-week curriculum, students who complete the course qualify for the option of taking additional classes in such important programming languages as C#, Python, and JavaScript.

The data science curriculum starts with a crash course in Microsoft Excel and its many advanced features that are useful to data scientists. A full quarter of the course (6 weeks) is then devoted to learning Python, a programming language created for data scientists, but now used for a vast range of applications. Along with Python itself, the class covers Python-related data analytic tools including NumPy, Pandas, and Matplotlib, along with data scraping using Beautiful Soup. The course then shifts to databases and the means of querying them along with the use of MongoDB to organize data.

The ensuing phase of the class delves into data visualization, the means of making data analysis legible to the lay eye. For this, students receive instruction in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to build visualizations from the ground up. Finally, the class touches on several advanced topics, such as using Tableau (a data visualization tool), Hadoop (which facilitates using networks to solve problems involving huge amounts of data), and machine learning (in other words, teaching computers to teach themselves.) The course concludes with a final project, for which students are divided into small groups to come up with a novel data visualization app.

Class Formats

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Extended Campus bootcamps are conducted exclusively online in a virtual classroom setting. Instruction is nonetheless live, with teachers and TAs available to answer questions in real-time. All class materials are available online, so there is no need to purchase textbooks.

Admissions Process

The UW bootcamps aren’t open enrollment; there is an admissions process. The only prerequisites for the bootcamp are being 18 years of age and the possessor of a high school diploma or GED. The application process begins with a half-hour phone interview for all candidates. Those who pass the interview satisfactorily are then assigned a problem-solving and critical-thinking assessment, which must be completed for admission to the bootcamps. The process is designed to select the candidates who are most likely to be able to complete the arduous program.

Pricing & Payment Options

The price of either bootcamp is $11,995. Payment plans are available, and there are pricing incentives for those who pay their entire tuition in advance. University of Wisconsin System alumni are eligible for a $500 scholarship to the bootcamp of their choice.

Career Support Services

University of Wisconsin Bootcamps provide a dedicated career services team to assist students in preparing for and beginning their job searches. This includes evaluation of such materials as resumes, portfolios, and GitHub and LinkedIn presences throughout the bootcamp. As students begin the job search process, a career director is available to assist them with such things as mock interviews, soft skills-polishing, and practical guidance on how to secure employment.

Alumni Outcomes

Neither the University of Wisconsin nor Trilogy Education publishes statistics as to the bootcamps’ success rates, but the UW Bootcamps’ blog states: “We see a number of employers hiring online boot camp students due to their work ethic and combination of hard skills (technical knowledge) and soft skills (adaptability, collaboration, creativity, etc.). Because of the fast-paced nature of an online boot camp, students pick up on these core skills and best practices while building a robust portfolio of projects to show off to potential employers.”

The average annual salary for a coding specialist in Milwaukee (where many bootcamp attendees reside) is more than $55,000, just higher than the national average. Data analysts in Milwaukee earn about $55,000 per year as well, while first-year data scientists’ salaries are in the neighborhood of around $85,000 annually.

What Do Students Say?

One student reviewer wrote that the program, “plus the invaluable experience gained during the curriculum's group projects adequately prepared me for the job market”. However,

“This boot camp is 100% a ‘you get out of it what you put in’ endeavor, and the concepts presented can be extremely challenging, particularly for those with little to no previous background in web development (which you don't need to be successful in the boot camp!).”

Key Takeaways

University of Wisconsin Extended Campus/Milwaukee bootcamps offer a thorough, well-conceived curricula
There are portfolio-building projects built into the curriculum
Ample career services give critical support to students

The program moves at an exceptionally fast pace and some students struggle to keep up
While the classes are live online, there are no in-person options

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University of Wisconsin Extended Campus

School Locations

Subjects Taught at University of Wisconsin Extended Campus

What Classes Are Available?

Class Formats

Admissions Process

Pricing & Payment Options

Career Support Services

Alumni Outcomes

What Do Students Say?

Key Takeaways

Top Courses at University of Wisconsin Extended Campus

Coding Boot Camp

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Subjects Taught at University of Wisconsin Extended Campus

Coding

Map of University of Wisconsin Extended Campus Locations