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Instructor

Laura Ruival B.A. in Communication – UC San Diego; iOS Swift Certificate – UCSD Extended Studies; Apple App Dev (Swift) Certified User; KUBO Certified Teacher; Microsoft Azure Fundamentals & AI Fundamentals

Software Engineer; Coding & Robotics Instructor (Alpine Ed. Foundation, since 2018); CS Instructor (UCSD Extended Studies, since 2019); Instructor (Sally Ride Science, since 2020)

Bio

Laura Ruival is a software engineer with 15 years of full-time commercial software development experience and a programming instructor. She took her first HTML class as an undergraduate at UC San Diego in 1996 and has been hooked ever since. Since graduating she has continued to learn everything she can about coding while pursuing a career as a web developer and software engineer. She has worked for various companies around San Diego including a dot com startup, an eLearning company, a casino, and a Fortune 500 fintech firm. She has taken numerous computer science classes at Grossmont college and UC San Diego Extended Studies and continues learning to this day. She completed the iOS Programming with Swift certification at UC San Diego Extended Studies and earned Apple’s App Dev with Swift Certified User certification from Certiport in October of 2021. Last year she also completed two Microsoft certifications: Azure Fundamentals and AI Fundamentals. 

After taking a break from the corporate world to have children, she decided that she was ready to give back to the schools and organizations that helped her achieve her career goals. She made it her mission to expose more young people to coding. Toward that end, in 2018 she began teaching coding and robotics for Alpine Education Foundation, a non-profit organization that brings STEAM subjects to elementary schools in the Alpine Union School district. 

The following year Laura also began teaching for UC San Diego Extended Studies' Futures program which offers programming and robotics courses to high school students. She teaches Front End Web Technologies, iOS Swift and Robotics with JavaScript courses. She also teaches Scratch coding camps for Sally Ride Science. Laura is eager to pass on her knowledge and experience in the software industry and make coding accessible to every student.

In her spare time she enjoys playing Pickleball, hiking, camping and spending time with her husband, two children and her dog.