The College of Technology, along with the Information and Logistics Technology Department, were proud hosts of the 2010 AITP Region 3 Student Conference, which was held on the University of Houston campus on October 21-23. The 2010 AITP Student Conference brought together almost 500 participants, speakers, exhibitors and volunteers. This year’s conference involved almost 300 students from 24 different universities from a six state region, which was a 50% increase from last year’s conference. UH’s AITP Faculty Advisor, Bret Detillier served as Co-Chair of this year’s conference.
The conference was kicked off with a Welcome Address by the University of Houston’s President and Chancellor Renu Khator. The Keynote Address featured a panel discussion led by Umesh Verma, CEO of Blue Lance. The panel discussed the Greater Houston’s Partnership 5-year Strategic Technology Plan. Panel members included:
- Dr. William Fitzgibbon III, Dean, College of Technology,
- Paul Frison, Executive Vice Chairman, Houston Technology Center
- Amy Suhl, General Manager for Applications Support, Shell Trading
- Jenifer Jarriel, VP of Information Technology and CIO, Baylor College of Medicine
- Richard Lewis, CIO and Director, City of Houston
The conference also included an Exhibitor/Career Fair that brought out 26 companies.
On Saturday, October 23rd, the following Executive Presentations were presented:
- "IT Infrastructure and Operations: Top 10 Trends to Watch," Ed Holub, Gartner Group
- "Better Serving Our Members Through Innovation," Michael Bueche, USAA
- "Serious Gaming," Richard Buday, Archimage
However, the overall objective of the conference was giving the students eight different undergraduate academic competitions in which to test their knowledge of Information Systems. These contests were created and judged by outside corporations. The following UH Computer Information Systems (CIS) students placed in the following contests:
- 1st Place-Systems Analysis and Design – Monica Haaksma
- 1st Place-PC Trouble Shooting – Chris Lanier and Pariya Banan
- 1st Place-Microsoft Office Solutions – Caitlyn Craft and Kelvin Tran
- 2nd Place-Application Development – Rijul Raju
The UH Student Chapter also was awarded with the prize of 2nd Best Overall School. UH was only one point behind the best overall school, which was won by Texas State University.
An important note for the Application Development contest was that the competition required all participants to program their applications in C# (C Sharp). Rijul Raju was not proficient in this particular development language but used the first 30 minutes of competition to teach himself the nuances of this language and still manage to place 2nd. Rijul was also the only individual to place within his contest.
Congratulations to the winners.
UH plans on sending a team to the AITP National Student Conference which will be held in Orlando, Florida on March 24-27, 2011. For more information about programs in the Department of Information and Logistics Technology, visit here.