March 07, 2017

Web development team heads to national competition

CARBONDALE, Ill. – Five seniors in Southern Illinois University Carbondale’s Information Systems Technologies program who make up the university’s student web development team will participate in a national competition in St. Louis.

The team will compete April 8 at the Association for Information Technology Professionals (AITP) National College Conference and Career Fair. This is the third year a student web development team from the university has competed.

The project involves building a web application for a non-profit group or organization; this year’s project is a fully functioning website for Ascend, a registered student organization in the College of Business. The project started in September 2016 and will end with a formal presentation for judging at the AITP National College Conference. Students are judged on a variety of criteria, primarily their development process, Nancy Martin, associate professor in the IST program and faculty adviser, said.

A fund-raising effort to help take advantage of the March 15 early registration fee is at the team’s GoFundMe page at https://www.gofundme.com/siucaitp2017. The College of Applied Sciences and Arts and several individuals already have donated funds. The funds also go toward one night of lodging, nominal transportation and meal expenses and a competition poster.

The team members, by hometown are:

Illinois:

  • Centralia – Matt Gross
  • Danville – Lee Cooper
  • Sesser -- Cody Lingle

Georgia:

  • Atlanta -- Hallie Martin

China:

  • Sichuan – Ren Jing

In addition to the year-long web development projects, students also compete in other events at the conference, including database design and security challenge. Lingle won last year’s security challenge, Martin said.

Three team members, Cooper, Lingle and Jing, were members of last year’s team. Martin said the project work and competition experience are great opportunities, noting Lee was offered a summer internship with a national company because of his participation. The conference also is an important recruiting opportunity in representing the university, Martin said.

For more information about donations, contact Martin at nlmartin@siu.edu.