9th Annual Collegiate Conference - Omaha, Nebraska - April 1-3, 2004   

Andrew Elia, Brian Love, John Lynn, Dramayne Ringgold, Tom Stagliano, and Dr. Antonucci traveled to the AITP National Collegiate Conference in Omaha, Nebraska April 1st.  There were over 700 students and faculty, from over 85 colleges and Universities in attendance of this conference  (schools like, Texas A&M, Purdue U., University of Florida, Northwestern, CMU, University of Alaska, Mesa State, …. To name a few)!!  (Imagine a banquet room with over 700 people, mostly college students).      Once again, Widener University was recognized several times at the awards banquet and also during the conference over the 3 days we were there.  And of course we had a poster in the lobby of the conference hall, where everyone was able to see – a great way to promote Widener University!!       Widener University won the Region 11 Outstanding Student Chapter of the year – AGAIN!  We received a very nice plaque for this award. Tom Stagliano, our AITP president, and myself went on stage to receive this award.  Our poster won an honorable mention this year – Brian Love and Tom Stagliano worked hard on this poster and we will soon have this one in our lobby.      We had several students submit papers for the paper competition – although none were selected in the top 10, it is great to have students willing to try!      We had two other students compete in the database competition; although they did not place in the top 4, they did a great job!!  John Lynn and Andrew Elia represented Widener well and finished the problem assignment in the database competition.  There were 74 teams that competed and many never finished the assignment.

8th Annual Collegiate Conference - West Lafayette, Indiana  April 1-3, 2004   

  Eric Papa, Steven Giannone, Dramayne Ringgold, Pei-Hsuan Lin, Dave Tripler, John Lynn, Sokha Seng, and Dr. Antonucci left March 27^th for West Lafayette, In – home of Purdue University!!  It was hard to think that we could out do last year, but we did!!  We returned with many awards and honors.  There were over 620 students and faculty, from over 85 colleges and Universities in attendance of this conference  (schools like, Texas A&M, Purdue U., University of Florida, University of Maryland, Kent State, Northwestern, CMU, University of Alaska, LSU, …. To name a few)!!  (Imagine a banquet room with over 600 people, mostly college students).     Once again, Widener University was recognized several times at the awards banquet and also during the conference over the 3 days we were there.  And of course we had a poster in the lobby of the conference hall, where everyone was able to see – a great way to promote Widener University!!             First of all, Widener University won the Region 11 Outstanding Student Chapter of the year.  We received a very nice plaque for this award. Eric Papa, our AITP president, and Dr. A  went on stage to receive this award.  Our poster won the conference banner award!!!  This meant that the students all went up on stage during the awards banquet to receive the award… the winning poster is in the MIS Lab– we also received a very nicely framed award for this with $150!!  For both of these awards, pictures were taken that will be put in AITP national publications.            We had several students competing at this conference… First, we had 3 students send in papers for the paper competition, and 2 of them were selected as the top 10 papers.  This meant that these 2 students traveled to the conference to present their papers as part of the competition.  The 2 students in this competition were:  John Lynn – “The Enterprise Information Portal (EIP) in a Corporate Environment” ; Steven Gianonne – “Customer Relationship Management: Successful Trend or Passing Fad?”  They both did a superb job and at the awards banquet we found out that John Lynn received honorable mention!!!!  John posed for pictures that will be in the AITP publications.  Other schools included in the top 10 papers were from Texas A&M, CMU, Mesa State, NSU…  This was a very competitive contest!  We had four other students competing in programming competitions, although they did not place in the top 4, they did a great job!!   David Tripler and Dramayne Ringgold – competed in the Java programming competition (there were 37 teams and after 15 minutes 14 of those teams got up and walked out – Dave and Dramayne stuck it out and finished the competition!!)    Eric Papa and Pei-Hsuan Lin – Competed in the web developer competition.  They also did a great job – competing against 35 teams.    Overall, Widener received a lot of publicity at this event.  There was one more noteworthy event…. AITP has several professional certification exams and had recently rewritten them, updating them and also making them a bit harder.  As a courtesy to the students, the AITP professional certification organization, ICCP, brought the exams and allowed the students to take them for free during the conference (each exam normally costs $195 to take).  Several of our students took the general exam and one of our students decided to take both the general exam and one of the specialty exams… Dave Tripler passed BOTH of these exams!!!  He now has his CCP (certified computer professional) and his ACP (associate computer professional).  This is a fantastic achievement – there were over 300 students who took the exams and very few passed! 

Several Widener Students Attend the AITP National Meeting in Baltimore - October 20th

Several AITP students were able to travel to Baltimore for one day of the National conference. This was the industry national conference (not to be confused with the student national conference which will be in April in Kansas City). They were able to meet Kevin Jetton, the president elect of AITP and the person who coordinates the student conferences. After a great lunch the Widener students left the conference and went to the inner Harbor for some fun!! They each had a chance to enjoy the beautiful weather and experience Baltimore's Harbor.