Tyler Technologies and UMaine partner to enhance high school app competition

Courtesy / Tyler Technologies Among the top three winners in the 2021 Maine App Challenge was Bookshelf Elf, created by Sarah Hagan of Cape Elizabeth High School to help middle school students choose books that interest them to encourage independent reading. Plans are underway to expand the challenge’s reach.

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By Laurie Schreiber

A new partnership between Tyler Technologies Inc. and the University of Maine is designed to enhance the company’s annual app development contest for high school students.

Tyler Technologies (NYSE: TYL), which provides integrated software and technology services for public sector clients, has a major presence in Maine, with 950 people and locations in Yarmouth, Augusta, Bangor and Falmouth. It is based in Plano, Texas.

Tyler launched the Maine App Challenge in 2015 in partnership with Educate Maine's Project>Login.

Held annually, the challenge is designed for encouraging high school students to explore software design and development — and to become the next generation of professionals pursuing future careers in STEM-related disciplines.

In the partnership with UMaine, Tyler with develop a series of in-person and virtual workshops for students to help them prepare for the competition. Workshops cover topics like brainstorming, customer and market research, prototyping, testing and pitching the idea.

Winning entries in this year's competition ranged from an app to help students keep track of school assignments and activities to app that helped students create customizable workouts.

The competition's prizes include scholarships totaling $10,000, tablet computers and guaranteed interviews for internships.

We asked Chris Hepburn, who is president of Tyler’s Enterprise Group and is based at the Yarmouth office, how the challenge came about and what’s involved with the UMaine partnership. Here’s an edited transcript.

Mainebiz: How did the Maine App Challenge come about?

Chris Hepburn: The challenge is all about retaining the abundant talent we have in Maine, and to let students know there are great job and career opportunities right here. We wanted to reach students while they’re still in high school and when they’re making decisions on their college majors. The idea was to show them what a potential career would be in software development. Unfortunately, many Maine schools do not offer courses for this line of study. If not exposed to software development early on, there’s no way for students to even know if this is of interest. That’s how the app challenge came about, to introduce students to a potential college major and a potential career where they can stay in Maine.

Courtesy / Tyler Technologies

Chris Hepburn.

MB: How do you get word out about the challenge?

CH: The Maine App Challenge website is our first and primary resource for connecting with students. Once students register, we keep them engaged throughout the entire submission process. Our goal is to reach to every high school student in the state. We use a lot of social media outreach. We visit schools in person and ask teachers/principals to help us encourage students to participate in the challenge. Sometimes students get connected to us on their own, sometimes teachers introduce us, and sometimes it’s simply word of mouth.

MB: How many students have participated so far?

CH: We’ve had hundreds of students participate over the years.

MB: How does the challenge work?

CH: There are no prerequisites. None. Students do not need to know how to code. All they must do is connect with us, and we will show them how the challenge can be fun and rewarding.

The software we use is like building a puzzle. You put pieces of coding logic together to create a working app. The tool we use has a lot of videos for students to reference. If the students have questions, they can also reach out to us. We go to schools and have held workshops in our offices and virtually.

We have 20 to 25 employees who volunteer for this, and most of them graduated from a Maine high school. They’re passionate about giving back to the community and to the state. They say, ‘Hey, we’re here to help you.’ Every year we’re blown away by these students, who are doing this on their own time.

MB: How did you connect with UMaine on this project?

CH: We started working with UMaine this past summer. They had their first introduction to the challenge in June, during our 2021 awards ceremony. The university reached out to us saying, ‘We seem to have an aligned interest in retaining talent in Maine. Do you have any thoughts?’ We said, ‘Yes, how can you help us to introduce the challenge to more students?’ The university has been terrific; they took our thoughts and immediately put them into action. I am excited for the students to learn more about UMaine and the STEM degrees the university offers.

For the challenge the university enhanced their innovation workshops and are awarding micro credentials for students who complete the challenge. Their instructors modified the workshops slightly to align with the app challenge. The university is in the midst of recording the workshops — brainstorming, customer discovery, prototyping, testing and promotional pitching. We expect to have all of the recordings done by December. Students will be able to come to our website and watch these recordings anytime, anywhere. We want to make it easy for students to get started. And hopefully these students will earn a micro credential that they can put on their college applications.

MB: It seems like easily available workshop videos could help grow participation.

CH: We would love it if we had a thousand submissions. My grand vision is someday to have a massive awards ceremony with hundreds of students who completed the challenge. The Challenge is a success when more students participate, learn about a potential college major, learn about the career opportunities in Maine, and realize there are great jobs in Maine after college graduation.

MB: What’s the message behind the challenge?

CH: I think there’s a perception some high school students have that they’ve got to leave Maine to have a career, especially a career in STEM. What we’re trying to say is, if you want to go to college and receive some level of training in computer science or database engineering or any other STEM degree, there are hundreds of companies in Maine that need your skill set. Far too many students don’t realize they have the aptitude or the interest, because they don’t have that introduction at the high school level.

MB: Have you detected any outcomes so far?

CH: Some participants have gone on to STEM college studies, whether it’s chemistry, engineering, computer science, etc. The other thing we’ve introduced is a very robust internship program — and we’re not the only company doing this. We’re trying to circle back and say — start with an interest, potentially make it a college major, now what about an internship? Then you can see if it’s truly a passion.

MB: Is the 2022 challenge open now?

CH: It is. Students can visit our website. We expect students will work on the challenge now through March. There’s a series of submission instructions.

For more information, click here.