Tackling World Problems While Preparing Students for the Workforce

Academia is often focused on cultivating students’ research skills, with limited opportunities for students to develop industry connections and professional, transferable skills before entering the workforce. According to a McKinsey Global Survey, 87% of executives reported that college graduates often lack experience in professional skills, resulting in a skills gap in the workplace. Unlike other university courses, the tech boot camp offered by the Epicenter emphasizes skills-building for students. The boot camp aims to professionally prepare students as future entrepreneurs and expose them to real-world problems that arise in the technology workplace. In the beginning of the course, students focus on creating pitches for finding a technology solution to a social impact problem. Students are split up into teams based on the social focus on their pitch, with an industry coach for each team to guide students through their projects. During the boot camp, guest speakers from startups and the technology industry share knowledge with students on critical topics, such as project management, data analytics, UI/UX, and how to pitch.At the end of the 10-week bootcamp, students demonstrate their solutions to industry professionals from private and public organizations, academia and non-profit sectors. At the boot camp’s inception in 2018, only 40+ students applied. Fast forward to today and applications have increased to about 150-200 students each quarter.

Raffi Simonian
UCLA
Los Angeles, CA, USA

Raffi has been involved in the IT field for the past 35+ years. He started his career at Bechtel Corporation as a software engineer and has led large and small groups of software developers at such companies as SQRiBE Technologies (now Oracle), The Walt Disney Company, Candle Corporation (now IBM), DeskTalk (now HP), SeeBeyond (now Oracle) and Xdrive (now Verizon).

Raffi has managed more than 65 large-scale projects and has launched more than 20 different products from enterprise to online solutions. A strategic thinker with strong management skills and emphasis on building teams and relationships; communicating effectively; driving results; inspiring creativity and innovation; championing change and exhibiting professional excellence.

Raffi has taught IT and technology management courses at CSUN, UCLA Extension and Learning Tree since 1987. He has also done technology consulting and training at Northrop Grumman, UCLA, Paramount Pictures and numerous startups. Raffi holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Math/Computer Science from UCLA and an Executive MBA from Pepperdine University. Raffi is also Yellow Belt Certified in Lean Six Sigma.

Currently, Raffi is the Executive Director for UCLA’s Epicenter for Action Research where he manages the launch of new STEM certification programs and project-based innovation hubs for the students. Raffi founded and launched UCLA’s tech bootcamps for undergraduate and graduate students utilizing the Google Ventures Design Thinking framework. Due to their popularity, the tech bootcamps are now offered as a 4-unit UCLA Engineering course.

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