Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts senior Calvin MacKenzie was the only high school student to win a place on the “Wall of Fame” in IBM’s sixth annual Master the Mainframe Contest.
The contest is for university students, but high school students are encouraged to participate. This year’s contest attracted 3,537 students from 400 schools in the U.S. and Canada.
MacKenzie placed third and will receive an Apple iPad and a two-day expense-paid trip to the IBM mainframe plant in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
The contest was divided into three parts and began in October 2010. To successfully complete Part 3, students had to complete a series of difficult and time-consuming tasks, mastering the inner-workings of mainframe software products, security protocols, multiple programming languages and various utilities. Students had three months to explore the system and complete the contest tasks.
The contest is designed to equip students with basic skills to make them more competitive for jobs in the enterprise computing industry.
MacKenzie is the son of Kevan and Lian MacKenzie of Hot Springs Village.
The contest winners were:
1st place: Patricio Reynaga, West Texas A&M University
2nd place: Jay Thomas, Pace University
3rd place: Calvin MacKenzie, Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts
4th place: Philip Yeo, Dalhousie University
5th place: Sibo Niu, Syracuse University