A diverse team of high school students from Rochester, Minn. placed first in a recent national computer programming competition in Washington, D.C., earning a total of $18,000 in scholarships and prizes. Backed by a team of
IBM Rochester volunteers, the Black Data Processing Associates (BDPA) Southern Minnesota chapter sponsors a Youth Computer Training Program (YCTP), which teaches web programming techniques to high school students.

"The teamwork and enthusiasm displayed by the students and more than a dozen volunteers from IBM and the Mayo Clinic is truly awe inspiring," said team coach Zach Garbow. "This has been a goal of the Rochester Technical Vitality Council to reach out to the community like this and it was great to see the team's success."

The program, which focuses on introducing minorities to technology careers, meets for three hours every Saturday from December through July. The competition team then meets for up to 20 hours each week during the summer in preparation for the National Competition.

The Southern Minnesota team was awarded first place in the nation after receiving a perfect score on the programming project. Each team member received a $3,000 scholarship along with a trophy, a photo printer and
digital camera bundle from Hewlett Packard, and a Microsoft Zune mp3 and video player. This marks the fifth consecutive year that Southern Minnesota has placed either first or second  nationally, and the students have received $50,000.00 in scholarships collectively during that span.

In addition, the Southern Minnesota chapter of BDPA is the first and only chapter in the nation to provide their students high school credit for participation in the class.

IBM volunteers included: Zachary Garbow, Toni Adafin, Nathaniel Calvert, El Elzain, Therron Jones, John Jones, Julius Kwansa, Jim Chen, Bryan Logan, Darrell Nabors, and Osman Omer.

Mayo volunteers included: Shamila Amarasekera, Francis Aning, Brian Brownlow, Brent Buss, Nick Charboneau, April Gilbertson, Kelly Jackson, Joe Kamath, and Brad Rupperecht

Other volunteers included: Terry Glidden, Minnesota School of Business and Saji Weerasinghe, Self-Employed.

Summer Internship Students included: Kofo Adafin, Linda Larmore and Angi Porter.

The competition

On August 16-17, 2007, five students from the Southern Minnesota chapter competed against 21 other teams in BDPA’s national competition in Washington, D.C. The competition included an oral and computerized written
exam, as well as an advanced programming project. The competition team was comprised of students Yaa Kwansa , Ahmed Mahamad, Lauren Pemberton, Kunle Roberts, and Adwait Walimbe. Mohamed Ibrahim and Katie Lettellier served as alternates.

This year’s course covered a full open source web development stack including HTML and CSS for web page design, Javascript and PHP for dynamic functionality, and MySQL relational databases to save and access persistent
data.

Related Links:
Rochester students win national programming contest
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