Student Testimonial – Frontend Web Development Certificate

Dec 20, 2023 | Alumni Success, Frontend Web Development Certificate, Testimonials, Veterans Education & Training

Through feedback and employment reports from alumni students, we have recently been able to connect with a few alumni to talk about their experiences as a DWC student, any current professional endeavors, and how their time at DWC shaped their professional lives.

Terrian Heck is a junior web developer who after earning a technical degree, quickly realized that he needed to upskill his frontend web development skills to be able to grow into a well-rounded developer. Terrian, a veteran, found us through the VET TEC program and saw that the curriculum and late night classes fit his needs. With being on the east coast, the late night classes were also super helpful in still being able to maintain his job while getting extra skills training. Keep reading to learn more about Terrian’s experience with our instructors, classes, and how we’ve helped him grow his career.

What led you to choose DWC as the next step in your education? How did you end up in the Frontend Web Development Certificate Program?

Yeah, So I actually went through the VET TEC program and DWC was listed under the approved schools from them; I just kind of looked over their curriculum, saw the hours, and it fit a lot better with my schedule. I really wanted to focus more on frontend web development because I’ve already been doing backend development for a while. I wanted to get a little bit more experience with certain languages and, you know, maybe bring back around some of those things that I learned the first time going to school.

It worked really well because I’m on Eastern Time, and classes started at 5, which is like 7 here so I was able to still maintain my job while getting that extra training in and understanding the languages I needed to.

You mentioned having backend web development experience. Are you doing that as a career right now?

Well, actually not a lot of backend experience. I went to a school named Sheridan Technical College for web development experience but it was like a very broad curriculum with, you know, Photoshop, coding languages, Excel, Microsoft…everything that being a developer would entail was taught. But it wasn’t really a language focused school. You got some language learning, but the section for language was pretty long, and was still a lot of self-taught stuff. And it helps to actually have somebody say like, hey, you know, you would do this in this situation, right?

It was still a good school and it really was good to get my foot in the door. I built two WordPress sites before I even graduated from there. So, it did have these benefits and helped me start to navigate the web development field. But once I got to my current job I understood like, okay, I need to focus more on these other aspects, which was frontend.

From our program, what skills did you feel like you gained? Were there specific classes or instructors that stood out to you in giving that knowledge and information you were looking for?

Yeah, Brian. Brian is the man. He really broke it down elementary style and you know, if you had no experience by the time that you left the courses with him, you were pretty set. I made sure to tell Brian just how thankful I was for him. Especially with JavaScript; I had JavaScript experience but never that in-depth like he gave to me.

All the instructors are really good. The Photoshop course was really good. I have experience in Photoshop before, but just having that prior knowledge and being able to bring it back around and some of those gaps that you might have been missing, they help fill them in. That course was amazing, too. Everything was exactly what you needed to take yourself in a direction to be successful, because the main thing about the instructors, they just want you to be successful.

How did you feel as though the classes you’ve taken prepare you right now for any professional endeavors that you’re embarking on?

Definitely helped build a portfolio. If you didn’t have a portfolio already, by the time you got done with the program, you would have a pretty nice portfolio in digital art or any kind of digital creation, languages, websites, essential tools, you know, kind of learning those packages. Like, this was really my first time even dealing with packages. So, by the time you get done with the courses, you should have a pretty nice broad portfolio that can be taken to a future employer and used as a way of saying, “hey, this is what I have to offer.”

Have you had any web development opportunities pop up yet?

I was actually in a web development position before I started the courses, I just wanted to get my skills up. Even though I’m in this position, I want to make sure that if any other opportunity comes my way, I can fulfill that opportunity and meet that opportunity head on.

I’ve definitely had some job offers, and that is kind of hard sometimes…leaving one company to go to another, but definitely some job offers after the courses that I probably wouldn’t have had before, you know?

What advice would you offer to somebody considering us as a school, but also to those considering the Frontend Web Development Certificate?

I would tell anybody looking to get into it that your school is probably one of the better schools to go to, especially for a general understanding of some of these things. And if you’re thinking about still working full time and still going back to school, DWC is definitely the place to go, especially if you are on the East Coast, definitely the place to go.

And hey like I said, the instructors are top notch. They did a really good job on not making anybody feel stupid for not knowing anything. When it comes to learning, sometimes that’s the biggest thing that discourages people; they don’t want to seem like they don’t know anything and, you know, the ones leading play a big part in building up confidence in people.

So the instructors did an amazing job. I can’t say it enough.

Do you have any final thoughts as you reflect on your time as a DWC student?

No, everything is perfect. Everything is perfect. If it’s not broken, there’s nothing to fix, right?

Terrian knew he needed more than just self-paced courses to really learn the explicit skills and languages needed to excel and grow as a web developer. With our expert instructors, Terrian was able to get the personalized learning experience he needed to finally have all of the skills click together. As a junior web developer, earning the frontend web development certification has already brought forth a few new job opportunities and a new found confidence in his web development expertise.

Our frontend web development certification focuses on HTML, CSS, JavaScript as well as essential web tools that prepare you for a career in web design. Upon successful completion, students learn and Understand core languages of the web including HTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), learn advanced scripting with JavaScript, React, and other essential languages, examine essential web tools to improve your design workflow and efficiency, design web sites with SEO best practices, monitor web traffic closely with Google Analytics, and use Photoshop to wire-frame designs.

Frontend Web Development Certificate

Apply to DWC

Contact Us