MONTGOMERY – Governor Kay Ivey and Chancellor Jimmy Baker announced earlier today at the meeting of the Alabama Community College System Board of Trustees that beginning this fall, students will have the opportunity to enroll in a brand new curriculum designed by Apple, Inc. called App Development with Swift. Alabama’s community college system is one of only six in the country chosen to offer the program, and has four community colleges participating in the pilot phase.
The four community colleges that have been selected to pilot the initiative include Trenholm State Community College, Bishop State Community College, Drake State Technical and Community College, and George C. Wallace Community College-Selma, with the potential for other colleges to offer the curriculum in future semesters. Computer science faculty at each of the four community colleges will receive training directly from Apple, Inc. at their headquarters in Cupertino, CA next month.
“As we ensure our students have a strong start and a strong finish, it is important to recognize that computer science training is critical as we move more and more to a technology-driven economy, and app development is a large component of the computing jobs that are available now and in the future,” Governor Ivey said. “This program shows the world that Alabama is all-in to prepare our workforce for these critically-important 21st-century jobs”.
The curriculum is a full-year course designed by Apple engineers and educators and teaches students elements of app design using Swift, one of the world’s most popular programming languages. The course is designed to address growing workforce development needs in the ever-growing software development and information technology fields. It is expected that Alabama could have well over 5,000 unfilled computer programming jobs available in the next 10 years.
“We are excited about partnering with Apple to bring this curriculum to students at our community colleges, and high schools through dual enrollment”, remarked Chancellor Baker. “The future possibilities are endless in this
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For more information, contact:
Trish Jones
Special Assistant to the Chancellor
[email protected]
(334) 293-4555