First, the big news: Bryan Weaver won First Place in 2008's contest; Brandon Haugen and Genn Reschke were among the 60 students who were winners in Part 2; and Christopher Barber (B.S. and M.S. with us, now a grad student in the College of Business), Abhijit Karwa, and Nicholas Nagrodski received Honorable Mention for Part 2. The department is very proud of all six students! See http://www-304.ibm.com/jct01005c/university/students/contests/mainframewinners2008.html for a list of all of the winners.
We had another first place winner, too; back in 2005 , NIU Computer Science undergraduate Jason Arnold was one of three first place winners: see http://www-304.ibm.com/jct09002c/university/students/contests/mainframestudents.html .
Now, about the contest itself: every year since 2005, IBM has held a "big iron" Master the Mainframe programming contest, no experience necessary. You can take charge of a world-class system in this contest developed specifically for college students looking for a challenge.
Contestants use live systems and tackle real-world problems using storage management, Java and IBM DB2. Prizes include such items as MSI Wind Netbook computers, $100 debit cards, and t-shirts. Registration usually opens for the USA and Canada (excluding Quebec) in early September.
Please visit http://ibm.com/university/contest for details. The NIU faculty sponsors are Professors Amy Byrnes, Geogia Brown, and Robert Rannie.