News
Spring 2007 - 4th Annual HPTi Competition
This March, 28 students competed in the Fourth Annual Competition. The event is sponsored and organized by High Performance Technologies, Inc. (HPTi), an IT firm serving the federal government and based in Reston, VA. The competition is a partnership between the university and HPTi to introduce professional-world problems to students in the Information Systems concentration. Professors cite the competition as an opportunity to discuss the state of the industry, and HPTi welcomes the opportunity to promote the skills needed in future employees.
The event was organized by Dr. Mike Mitri from the Department of CIS and MS at James Madison University and Louis Chabot from HPTi. CIS faculty members Carey Cole, Don Musselman and Glenn Smith assisted conducting the competition.
Students participate in groups of two with cash prizes awarded to the top three teams. HPTi employees develop the questions, test the solutions, and help judge the competition. The company also provides the cash awards. Ryan Misiag and Joe Lee won the Java portion of the competition, and Cameron Keith and Melinda Langhans won the Visual Basic portion.
Professor Richard G. Mathieu, Department Head of JMU's CIS and Management Systems, is very pleased with HPTi's involvement in the event. "[HPTi's personnel] did an excellent job of conducting the contest and serving as HPTi spokesmen. I enjoyed talking with them about the development work they are doing at HPTi." The competition provides an opportunity for collaboration between members of the academic world and the IT industry.
HPTi's president Tim Keenan noted, "We are always looking for ways to support the community. Sponsoring this competition allows us to interact with the faculty who are teaching tomorrow's workforce. If we want to meet our client needs in the future, it makes sense to give every advantage to current students and programs."
Next year, HPTi and JMU hope to expand the competition to other departments within the university such as Computer Science, ISAT, and Computer Information Systems.
JMU Students Attend Annual AITP Colliegiete Conference
For the 3rd year in a row the JMU Association for Information Technology Professionals (AITP) attended the National Collegiate Conference.
The National Collegiate Conference had just over 500 students from 90 universities competing in 13 total events. Eight events fit the JMU CIS curriculum with five events in topic areas that we do not require. The number of competitors or teams in each event ranged from 20 to 65.
This year our JMU AITP Student Chapter travel team was sponsored by Deloitte & Touche, Fast Enterprises, KPMG, Price Waterhouse, and Protiviti. Each organization provided a donation between $500 and $1,500 to subsidize plane tickets and hotel accommodations. In addition to a donation, Fast Enterprises also supplied our travel team with embroidered team polo shirts and treated the travel team to a dinner.
Drs. Dillon and Kruck, advisors to the AITP and business college faculty in the CIS/MS Department , accompanied the AITP NCC travel team to Detroit, Michigan in April, 2007.
3rd Annual HPTI Programming Competition
The HPTI programming competition just keeps getting better and better! This year we held the third annual competition, with sixteen teams. Eleven teams participated in the Java competition and five more in the Visual Basic competition. All told, there were a total of 33 competitors, almost twice as many as last year. Some very challenging programming problems were presented to the competitors, and the overall performance was the best of any year so far.
Some universities represented at the conference
The competition was held under the generous auspices of High Performance Technologies, Inc . HPTI supporters included Louis Chabot (who helped to organize the event), Matt Perticone (a JMU alum from ISAT who assisted with coordination and helped judge), and Josh Broome (another JMU alum from computer science who helped create the programming problems and who also served as a judge).
Faculty coordination and support was provided by Mike Mitri, Glenn Smith, and Carey Cole, all three of whom also assisted with the judging. The top three finishers in the Java competition were:
- 1st place: Kevin Sturm and Sky Klein
- 2nd place: David Parker and Paul Toccl
- 3rd place: Richard Chapin and Lauren Mottley
In the VB competition, the top fnishing team was Matt Leveille and Chris Rielly .
Thanks to HPTI's generosity, $1000 in cash prizes will be distributed among the top finalists. Kevin and Sky's names will be immortalized on a plaque honoring the first place finishers, which is proudly displayed on the 2nd floor of ZSH.
Congrats to all the participants!
Click here to see pictures of the competition
Click here to see HPTI's recap of the competition
JMU Students attend International Telecommunications Education and Research Association (ITERA) and United States Telecommunications Association (USTA)conference
Two JMU students attended the joint International Telecommunications Education and Research Association ( ITERA ) and United States Telecommunications Association ( USTA ) conference in Las Vegas on October 22-26 2005 as student interns. CIS major Richard Chapin and BIS major Christopher Duncan assisted in coordinating presentation sessions and had the opportunity to visit over with 200 exhibitors and attend over 50 sessions dealing with current telecommunications issues and technologies.
Christopher Duncan and Richard Chapin at the conference
Some universities represented at the conference
The National Collegiate Conference was not only a competition for students in IT content areas but also included keynote speakers from Microsoft, Robert Half Technology, State Farm, and Wal-Mart. In addition, all of these companies had a recruiter team onsite to interview and present job offers to the winners.
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