Michigan State University alumni are making a significant impact at the Apple Developer Academy in Detroit, where their expertise and innovation are shaping the next generation of tech and app development leaders.
The Apple Developer Academy opened in 2021, a first-of-its-kind program in the U.S. A partnership between MSU and Apple with support from the Gilbert Family Foundation, the academy is a free program for qualified candidates who learn coding, marketing, project management and design.
MSU graduates and former students make up five of the 25 employees at the Apple Developer Academy, and the organization is led by an MSU alum as well. Director Sarah Gretter graduated with her doctoral degree in educational technology from MSU in 2017 and she has led the Apple Developer Academy since its inception.
“The time I spent in the College of Education really allowed me to gain a good theoretical baseline for the work I wanted to do,” she said. “The experience itself just prepared me for what was to be next — a lot of transferable skills that gave me a solid foundation to co-build this academy from scratch with Apple.”
Gretter started in a role that focused on co-designing the program and the space in downtown Detroit with Apple, hiring staff and recruiting the first cohort of learners. Now her work and focus have shifted to external relationships and making the Apple Developer Academy an entry point for MSU and the city of Detroit, finding ways to attract learners and partners and identifying job placement and opportunities for program graduates.
Like Gretter, other team members at the Apple Developer Academy share a passion and energy for using the skills they’ve learned at MSU and beyond to educate future app developers and to connect businesses and partners with the next generation of technological opportunities in the industry.
A passion for helping others
For Anny Staten, working at the Apple Developer Academy is not only a dream come true, but the completion of a circle — from an MSU student to an Apple Developer Academy educator.
Staten, the assistant director, has been at the academy with Gretter since 2021 when she came on as the manager. She earned her degree in education from MSU in 2008 and embarked on a career that has spanned various fields, from teaching kindergarten to technology.
“Throughout my journey at MSU and in my career, I’ve had the opportunity to apply everything I learned during my undergrad to work with adult learners,” said Staten, who has thrived as both a teacher and a mentor by finding creative ways to support others. “I’m passionate about helping people learn and improving their lives.”
While at MSU, Staten not only excelled academically, but also gained invaluable experience through student teaching and mission work on behalf of the university. One of the highlights of her university experience was an education abroad program where she lived and studied in Mexico and contributed to building a school for local children. Much like the Apple Developer Academy, the school construction project began with a grand vision and became a reality thanks to the dedication of individuals like Staten.
What fuels Staten’s passion for her role at the academy is the transformative journey students take as they turn their ideas into apps and programs.
“It’s incredibly rewarding to watch learners grow, evolve into senior learners and staff, and collaborate as a community to keep learning together,” she shared.
Tyler Lawrence, another member of the academy team, thinks often on his grad school experience at MSU and regularly applies the lessons he learned while working alongside students at the Apple Developer Academy.
Lawrence, an academic specialist and coding mentor, earned his bachelor’s degree in marketing from MSU in spring 2017 and his master’s degree in business analytics in winter 2018. Throughout his educational journey, he learned about marketing and business, but his computational mathematics, science and engineering courses and a graduate-level computer science and engineering course introduced him to computer science and made an especially significant impact that continues to play a role in his career today.
His CSE courses didn’t mirror a typical lecture and delivery class; rather, they featured projects that allowed students the opportunity to create code for fun and to tackle challenging concepts. That unique course structure is an approach that he’s brought to the Apple Developer Academy.
You won’t find classes at the academy where instructors lecture to a class filled with students. Instead, Lawrence helps plan a curriculum free of homework and tests that leverages project-based learning to introduce and familiarize students to coding and other technological fields. The way coding is taught at the academy reminds him of the courses he took at MSU, featuring projects and posing open-ended questions and problems.
“Like modeling a zombie apocalypse and figuring out how many iterations of a cycle it would take to infect the entire population,” Lawrence said. “Thinking about it from this fun, problem-based approach is how I was introduced to coding, and that’s what we do at the academy.”
Students learn coding and app development in the first year of the Apple Developer Academy program, but in the second-year Renaissance program, they apply the skills they’ve learned to solve unique problems and scenarios — from zombie apocalypses to helping Detroit businesses and partners with their app and technological needs.
A calling for problem-solving
Cinnamon Ashford started as a learner at the Apple Developer Academy when it first opened in 2021 before joining the staff as the project manager for students in the Renaissance program.
After completing the program herself, Ashford took on the role of helping students take what they learned in the first year of the program and apply it to client-facing projects. In the Renaissance program, students receive advanced training and mentorship and partner with Detroit organizations to approach app and technological questions with a fresh perspective.
Solving problems and helping people has been a theme of Ashford’s education and career. She graduated from MSU with a degree in family community services in 2005, starting a career after graduation that moved from human services to foster care work with children to adult foster care and more. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Ashford realized she was ready for a change.
She liked working in human services, but she had a growing passion for technology. Ashford saw an advertisement for the Apple Developer Academy and moved her career into a new phase.
Now, four years later, Ashford is the learner services coordinator for the academy, focused on helping people and problem-solving. Her work entails doing whatever she can to support learners, whether it be finding resources for those who are facing financial challenges or removing barriers that might prevent learners from giving the Apple Developer Academy their full attention.
“It must be a calling in my life,” she said. “I came here and thought I would go into tech and make some stuff, but even then, you are trying to solve a problem by creating an app. It’s not what app am I going to make, it’s what problem needs solving that this app will help solve.”
The Apple Developer Academy has only grown since its inception, equipping more than 1,000 learners with coding, design and marketing skills to help them take advantage of opportunities in the iOS app economy. During that time, Gretter has seen MSU alumni and former learners help drive the academy’s success.
“I enjoy taking a step back and being able to observe the work we’ve done in the last four years,” Gretter said. “When I see mentors and instructors on staff who went through the academy and now work at the academy, that makes me really happy.”
