The MySQL, CSS3 Challenge

New Haveners looking to boost their web-building skills can now head down to Church Street.

Gateway Community College and city officials announced Tuesday afternoon their collaboration to offer a 26-week software development certification program preparing students for careers in building and maintaining websites. The city is offering five scholarships over the next year to New Haven residents who apply for the course.

The program will teach its students to code in PHP, MySQL, jQuery, HTML5 and CSS3 — giving them the skills to develop and maintain websites’ code, as well as design and optimize databases.

Mike Piscitelli, the city’s deputy economic development administrator, said the program is part of the Harp administration’s ​“Safety, Employment and Education” initiative, which supports jobs in emerging tech and science sectors.

Coding is a ​“skill set that can be taught,” he said, to build a workforce prepared for new jobs coming into the city. The U.S. Department of Labor predicts computer software companies will grow by 22 percent through 2020.

Joe Ogle, one of the advisors for the program’s design, said the program was designed using a ​“boot camp mentality.” Students are expected to put in 400 hours of training — with 200 hours taught by an instructor and the other 200 hours self-directed learning.

The advisory group ​“settled on key skills” to allow graduates of the program to ​“get a foot in the door anywhere,” he said. It is useful for those who want to change careers or who want to solidify their skills. Students in the program must complete an internship and develop their own web portfolio, he said.

Applicants are expected to be competent in computer literacy, math, logic and reasoning. The full cost of the program is $3,500 — half the amount of similar programs, said Vicki Bozzuto, Gateway’s dean of workforce development.

To apply, prospective students must attend an information session. The next session is Friday at 1 p.m. at Gateway.

Virginia Kozlowski, who heads the quasi-public Economic Development COrporation, tied the program into efforts to prepare New Haveners for new-economy work. ​“We don’t have enough people to fill these jobs,” she said.