IBM Holds Master the Mainframe Contest
IBM’s Master the Mainframe Contest, part of the company’s Academic Initiative, aims to equip high school and college students with the basic skills needed to make them more competitive in the job market.
This year’s contest, which drew over 4,600 students from the US and Canada, was the largest turnout for IBM in North America since its 2005 inception, IBM said today, March 29.
The three-part contest serves as an introduction to programming and application development and requires no initial mainframe experience. As students complete each part of the contest, judges evaluate their results and reward those who move on to the next step.
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Each phase gets considerably harder as students progress, beginning with basic mainframe navigation to completing a project that tackles a real-world business scenario.
This year’s top three contest winners are:
- 1st place: Miles Nosler, Texas State University
- 2nd place: Benjamin Paul, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
- 3rd place: Sushain Cherivirala, Dulles High School
In addition to the contest introducing new IT skills, IBM helps students search jobs by connecting them with industry-related jobs posted on Systemzjobs.com.
The job board is a resource to link IBM System z clients and partners with students learning the mainframe and professionals seeking System z job opportunities. To date, more than 4,300 job seekers have registered. Systemzjobs.com regularly features over 1,000 mainframe-related jobs, according to IBM.
In the picture above: The top winners of IBM’s 2012 Master the Mainframe Contest from North America, Spain and Spanish Latin America were flown to Poughkeepsie, NY for an awards ceremony. From the left: Paolo Carlos, Madrid; Sushain Cherivirala, Dulles High School; Miles Nosler, Texas State University; Benjamin Paul, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology; Nahuel Tori, Argentina.
