Hello Study Buddies!

This petition has been created to encourage Will Sentance, co-founder and CEO of CodeSmith, to award a full scholarship to a prominent figure in the CodesmithX Slack community. If you’re like me and have perused the CodesmithX Slack community for study groups or further help and advice on gaining admission to the elite coding world of CodeSmith, then you have indeed bumped into Chris Kułaczkowski, better known as “Chris K.” on Slack. Chris currently runs “jshp-study-buddy-big-ol-group”, a remote study group consistently held every Saturday at 4pm EST || 7pm PST || 1:00 am CST via Zoom. We are coming to you without his knowledge because we feel very passionately that he is worthy of the recognition and the opportunity of a scholarship.

Chris has been heavily involved in the CodeSmith community for over a year. In that time, he has been a constant presence within the Slack community and has helped many of us prospective and current students at all stages of our journey with CodeSmith. He continues to run weekly study sessions until 3:00 AM (his time in Poland) to help prepare new students for the challenges of the technical interview while providing guidance and helpful feedback. I know that for many of us, attending the Study Buddy workshops played a major part in our success in passing the technical interview, ultimately leading to our acceptance to the program. He has gone above and beyond for countless members of the CodeSmith community by being an indispensable resource outside of the weekly workshops, having answered an untold number of questions in the #csx-challenge-help and responding to private messages about JavaScript fundamentals and challenges.

You may be surprised to learn that Chris is not a graduate of the program but in fact, greatly desires to attend the program. In his time, he has seen others that he began with or helped along the way get admitted to and graduate CodeSmith. Unfortunately, he does not have the financial means or resources to pay the tuition, especially while supporting his parents. Even a deferred payment option would not be a solution, as salaries in Poland cannot compare to those in the US. After currency conversion, the amount needed for the immersive tuition, roughly 80,000 PLN, would be enough to pay the down payment for a house in Poland and is beyond the salary Chris is paid.

We would love to see nothing more than for Chris to finally be given his opportunity to experience the entirety of CodeSmith through the immersive program. He exemplifies every quality that CodeSmith hopes for in its new students and is an incredibly positive influence in the community. If you would be willing to support us in helping Chris gain a full scholarship to CodeSmith, please sign this petition and pass it along to anyone else who has benefited from his support.

As Chris would say, “This is a community effort . . .”!