Higher education notebook

Apple coding hub to open at college

Apple will open a regional coding center at Arkansas Baptist College, part of the company’s effort to provide “technology hubs” at historically Black colleges and universities nationwide, the company announced last week.

The Little Rock college’s center was one of 10 announced, and the school will be one of 12 U.S. historically Black colleges and universities with Apple regional coding hubs.The center will offer courses that will be open to the public and will promote code-learning throughout the community.

Apple said the hubs are designed to partner with other community groups, such as kindergarten-through-12th-grade schools and local-level governments.

This month, Apple will teach educators from the colleges to use Swift, which is Apple’s coding language. That training will be used to launch the centers’ community efforts.

Crew to map city’s accessible areas

A team of Ouachita Baptist University researchers will be traveling around Arkadelphia to identify and publicize the city’s most accessible walking areas for people with disabilities, the university announced last week.

The researchers obtained a grant from the National Center on Health, Physical Activity and Disability.

They’ll develop an app that maps the most accessible parts of the city and make a video to “train Arkadelphia residents about accessibility and inclusion,” according to the university’s announcement.

One of the researchers, Amber Chelette, assistant professor of kinesiology and leisure studies, was inspired by her experiences walking around Arkadelphia on Halloween night, she said in the news release. Sidewalks were incomplete or obstructed, she said.

She’ll work with Hallie Clark, instructor of kinesiology and leisure studies, and Allyson Phillips, assistant professor of psychology, as well as a student, Tyrese Allen, and a recent graduate, Geoff Hartley.

School, its partner get national award

Arkansas Tech University-Ozark Campus and its partner, Green Bay Packaging Arkansas Kraft Division, are among three recipients nationwide of a workforce education award for their technical training center partnership.

The company spends three days each week, during a five-week class term, training its employees at the center in Morrilton, near the company’s operations. The university works with other companies to do training at the center one day each week.

The decade-long partnership has trained more than 1,000 employees from about five dozen Arkansas companies, according to the university. The National Council for Workforce Education awarded the university and Green Bay Packaging one of three national Exemplary Program Awards this year recognizing credit and noncredit workforce programs.