2020 Year in Review
Forge programs help students discover and develop their talents.
Scroll to learn more about each of our programs or click to jump.
Skills Courses
10-week, high-impact, part-time courses in digital skills. Learn more →
Launch Summer Internship Program
High-intensity skills training paired with a summer internship at a startup. Learn more →
Impact Program
Quick, high-impact projects for nonprofits and the broader Charlottesville community. Learn more →
Forge Student Leadership
Our unique model empowers our students to lead Forge itself. Learn more →
Program Overview: Skills Courses
Our 10-week, high-impact, part-time courses in digital skills.
Our Skills Courses are the most common way students start their Forge experience. They offer a low-stakes and low-cost way to explore a new skill or level up in something a student might already be familiar with, free of traditional academic pressures or prerequisites.

Our learning experience is strikingly different from a typical college course or MOOC. Our proprietary, project-based teaching method keeps curriculum current and is centered around how students can use their skills for good in their community. All of our instructors and teaching assistants are still students, which creates a supportive culture of learning amongst classmates.
Thanks to the generous support of these UVA sponsors, all UVA students pay only $95 for our Skills Courses. This is a significant discount from our (already low-cost) public price of $200.

Additionally, our Support Network enables us to offer $20,000 in scholarships to hundreds of students with financial need each year, over half of which goes to first-generation college students. We'd love for you to consider contributing to our scholarship fund -- details are here.

In April, we moved all of courses online due to COVID-19. While fall enrollment is expectedly down due to COVID-19, student completion rates and student satisfaction ratings have both improved, year over year.
750
students each year take a Skills Course at Forge
89%
of students start their involvement at Forge in a Skills Course
95%
of Forge students say they'd recommend our courses to a friend
“
"The quality of Forge courses is the direct product of the incredible work done by several generations of student leaders. We've made the student learning experience into something that is more unique, rewarding, and real than any other educational experience I've had."
— Ben Artuso, Class of 2021, Forge Student Data Science Instructor
Our Course Offerings
- Data Science III
- Data Science II
- Data Science I
- Software Engineering II
- Software Engineering I
- Digital Marketing I
- Graphic Design I
- UX Design I
- Videography I
- No-Code Prototyping I
“
Our teachers, as students themselves, are humble, unintimidating, and approachable. Through this learning model, we've abolished the concept of "stupid questions" and opened the door for every student to engage with and solidify their own learning, at their own pace.
— Former Forge Student Instructor
Program Overview: Launch
Our high-intensity skills training paired with a summer internship at a startup.
Launch is designed to close the skills gap between what students learn in college and what they need to succeed in fast-paced jobs. We find the next generation of tech builders and then train them for 160+ hours before we place them at a demanding internship. This enables us to develop students' skills much farther than any other program we offer. All Launch students learn:

  • In-depth technical skills in either software engineering, data science, UX design, or marketing
  • How to solve real-world challenges as part of a team
  • Communication and professionalism skills to be an effective employee
  • Prioritization techniques for working in a startup environment
  • How to present technical concepts to non-technical audiences

In 2020, we rapidly adjusted our training to adapt to COVID-19 by moving all teaching online and incorporating new instruction on remote work. We successfully placed 65 students at company or nonprofit partners for internships, with 85% working remotely.
1,000+
Launch applicants each year for ~100 spots
273
interns placed since 2017
70%
of placements in the Charlottesville-Albemarle region
50%
of Launch students start in our Skills Courses
Our Launch Tracks
1) Data Science
Advanced predictive analysis, ML, and visualizations

2) Software Engineering
Full-stack software development

3) UX/UI Design
User experience design for web and mobile

4) Digital Marketing
Full-stack online marketing
Our Innovative Payment Model
After students complete their internship, students pay Forge back for their $3400 tuition, which covers both their training and their internship placement. Even after paying that back, students still take home $2-5,000 from their summer internship. This makes the transformative Launch experience possible for students who can't afford to go a summer without earning money. We also offer scholarships to students with very significant financial need.
Launch's cost per hour of training is only $21/hour, 57% lower than iXperience and 32% lower than General Assembly.
Our tuition is drastically cheaper than comparable programs, many of which charge $10,000+ for similar levels of instruction. Launch's low cost and scholarship program is made possible both by our proprietary teaching model and by our generous donor network.

Most schools have little to no incentive to make sure their graduates are prepared for awesome, high-paid jobs. We built Launch to challenge this traditional model and to purposefully align our incentives with our students.
$3,000
Median student take-home pay after tuition is paid
$500,000+
paid out to students since 2017 (after tuition)
“
"I have received incredible mentorship and guidance at all levels—my managers, my peers, and my students at Forge have each taught me countless lessons, from the best way to clean a dataset to how to recover gracefully from hard, huge failures."
— Launch 2019 Program Graduate
Most of our Launch students continue their involvement with Forge after their internship. These Launch graduates bring what they learn back to the Forge community, where they serve as mentors, instructors, program managers, and more. This means that for every intern a company hires, they're also investing in the growth and development of new Forge students.
Economic Development Impact
Forge fuels Charlottesville-Albemarle startups, small businesses, and nonprofits with trained talent.
Launch connects rising talent at the University of Virginia with the fast-growing business community in the Charlottesville-Albemarle region. We make a tremendous local impact on talent retention and economic development, with 273 students placed at 140+ local companies since 2017, with over 120 students continuing either part-time or full-time after their internships.
70%
of company partners are based in the Charlottesville-Albemarle region
50%
of students continue part- or full-time after this Launch internship
40+
full-time employees retained locally since Launch began in 2017
9.4/10
rating our companies give our interns' quality of work
A few of our nearly 200 partners
Our interns were outstanding, delivering real value to the business and interacting with senior stakeholders, displaying maturity and skill beyond a typical college student or junior employee.
Thompson Eberline
Managing Director, S&P Global
I've found that my intern's knowledge, attention to detail, and dedication to producing a high quality product has made it easy to let him take on projects independently.
Chastity Lacy
Marketing Specialist, UVA Community Credit Union
We had an excellent experience with our intern. She was better then many entry level employees I've had.
Rachel Davis
Director of Product, Pearl Certification
[Forge] is an incredible institution and like nothing else at any university we work with.
Brendan Collins
College Recruiter, Google
Program Overview: Impact
Quick, high-impact projects for nonprofits and the broader Charlottesville community.
Our Impact program places students on small, high-impact technical projects that serve the local community in some way. Some projects are home-grown and others are for local nonprofits.

Impact inspires students to start stuff, gives students opportunities to practice their skills, connects them with the community, and teaches them project management. Projects typically last only 3-4 weeks, so students can complete as many projects as they'd like during a given semester.

Forge started the Impact program in early 2020. By the end of the year, 50 students will have completed a total of 8 projects. These include a fundraising campaign for COVID-19 relief, a get-out-the-vote web app, complex data analysis for several local nonprofits, and more. We're excited by this program's early success, and are actively seeking donor support to grow this program further in 2021.
Project Spotlights
Save the Corner
We launched a fundraising initiative and marketing campaign in summer 2020 to get support for our Corner restaurant neighbors suffering from the economic impacts of COVID-19. We fundraised over $6,000 in two months to buy Corner meals for local residents in need in partnership with Frontline Foods.

We also fundraised money for laid off Corner restaurant workers and sold gift cards to the restaurants. All together, this Impact project resulted in nearly 1,000 meals for community members in need.
Visit savethecorner.com
HoosVoting.org
With the challenges of COVID-19 and the limited public transportation options in Charlottesville, voting can be difficult and confusing for many students. We worked with Student Council, University Democrats, and College Republicans to build a nonpartisan resource to get out the vote in the UVA community. 800+ used the site to make a plan to register and vote.
Visit HoosVoting.org
Computers4Kids
Computers4Kids (C4K) is a beloved local Charlottesville nonprofit that provides equipment and STEM mentoring to local youth. Our data science students worked with their team to better understand how their student demographics and usage of their programs have changed over time. "Forge's students were tremendously helpful to us," shared Blair McAvoy, then-Clubhouse Coordinator for C4K. "Their data analysis really helped us understand where we needed to focus our efforts next."
Visit Computers4Kids
Program Overview:
Student Leadership
Our unique model empowers our students to lead Forge itself.
Our secret sauce is our student leadership.
Students lead our marketing, our courses, and our community, while our full-time team provides strategic direction, leadership development, and operational support. This hybrid leadership model enables us to create impactful, adaptable, engaging, and low-cost programs unlike any other school.
Students hold leadership roles at every level of Forge, from our board of directors to our program managers to our volunteers. However, our unique student-led model really shines when it comes to our courses and curriculum.

  • Student leaders can be better mentors and guides for their peers, since they've been in their shoes before and know where they might get stuck.

  • Student leaders know what makes a lesson fun (or extremely boring), so they know how to design programs their peers will love.

  • Student leaders inspire new Forge students to work hard and stay involved in our community. Their role communicates that in just two or three semesters they can not only learn an entirely new skill, but be ready to teach it to others.

  • Student leadership enables us to be more agile than any university or big company so we can transform our programs quickly as technologies change.
80
student instructors and teaching assistants hired each year
40
student program managers and marketing staff hired each year
62%
of our student leaders are women
“
Our student-led teaching model gave me an opportunity to transform quickly from mentee to mentor, and that's been huge for my confidence. I've since sought out external summer and full-time opportunities that I never would have had the guts to pursue otherwise.
— Current Forge Student Leader
Serving as a student leader at Forge is the most transformative experience we offer. We give 150+ students a year the opportunity to put their new skills to work by shaping and building an organization they care about. Joining our team is often the first time many students are given a chance to own something and to lead others, resulting in tremendous growth in their leadership, management, and technical skills.

It's not uncommon for a 19-year old at Forge to be leading a team of 10, teaching a class of 30, or designing a marketing campaign for thousands. Many of our best student leaders graduate with experience that is typically inaccessible until a second or third full-time job.
“
I forget sometimes how special the trust is that Forge has given me. When people ask about my college part-time job, I surprise people when I say I am a student leader in charge of a teaching team of 34 who serves 300 students a semester.

We are not student advisors; we are a part of the decision making process and our insights are crucial to the function of Forge. That doesn't happen for most college students. I hope my future career values what I bring to the table as much as Forge has.
— Current Forge Student Leader