The 11th Annual IT Symposium

We had another great year with hundreds of our high school guests from across Texas! Opening with an incredible keynote address we gathered in the LBJ ballroom to hear from Mr. Beierle, SVP and CIO of RBFCU. Afterward, our IT Symposium attendees began their day full of great speakers and challenging competitions. We want to thank all of our staff and volunteers who represented the CIS Department, Career Services, ITAC at TxState, and of course RBFCU. We would also like to thank our other sponsors who helped make this event possible; Samsung, McCoy’s Building Supply, and RBFCU. Please check out our talented competition winners below.

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COMPETITION WINNERS

Computer Security

1st)  Jospeh Dandridge (Grandbury MCJROTC)

2nd) Michael Garica (SouthWest HS)

3rd) Matthew Martinez (Southwest HS)

Java

1st) Zebulon McCorkle (Brenham HS)

2nd) Benjamin Phem (Hendrickson HS)

3rd) Jonah Salem (Pflugerville HS)

HM) Steven Mendiola (Pflugerville HS)

Excel

1st) Manial Pienado (United South HS)

2nd) Clare Hardwood- (Montgomery HS)

PC Troubleshooting

1st) Devin Dunn (Southwest HS)

2nd) Allison Maddox (Southwest HS)

3rd) Samual Vinton (Southwest HS)

Access

1st) Jennifer Rodriguez (United South HS)

2nd) Clare Hardwood (Montgomery HS)

3rd) Alan Hernandez (United South HS)

HM) Manuel Peinado (United South HS)

HM) Natalie Wagner (Montgomery HS)

HM = Honorable Mention

 

This Friday is the 11th Annual IT Symposium!

We are extremely excited that it’s almost here. We’ve got incredible speakers, enthralling competitions, and delicious food all lined up for our participating schools. Don’t forget to check our IT Symposium page for our travel resources, official schedule, and contact information!

If you are looking to volunteer, or haven’t been placed in a volunteer position yet, please reach out to us! Our team is already looking great, and we’re looking forward to making it even better.

See you then!

Thank you to Randy Sabbagh of Charles Schwab for the interactive, and fascinating seminar on Technology Resilience!

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Thank you also to everyone who came to the chapter meeting, as well as the information session afterwards. In case you weren’t able to make it, our guest speaker Randy Sabbagh spoke on his twenty years of experience with Charles Schwab, and his expertise in Technology Resilience. Mr. Sabbagh works daily for the preparedness of Charles Schwab information systems to face natural disasters, cyber-attacks, and hardware malfunctions. Their resilience team is so important not only because are they one of the largest financial institutions in the world, handling over three Billion dollars in assets, but they also operate in a Federated System under regulations from the federal government. With a company of such complexity, it is obvious to see why they prioritize accuracy. As Mr. Sabbagh said it himself “Murphy’s Law is a law for a reason”.

After the Chapter Meeting in the student center, a group of us also went over to the Info Session held in McCoy. There Mr. Sabbagh was able to answer questions, and describe working with Charles Schwab in detail. From work culture, to acquiring new positions within the company, he was able to provide real insight to the companies values. Our Info Sessions again proved to be extremely beneficial, and I would encourage everyone to prioritize them upon our next meeting since these posts won’t be able to do them justice!

IT Symposium

Next week, Friday the 13th of October, we will be hosting our annual IT Symposium! This event allows High School students all across Texas to come learn about the field of Information Technology, and compete in contests in different programs, and even languages. We have competitions in Troubleshooting, Excel, and even Java! All in all, it’s a really cool opportunity for AITP to provide young students. If you want more information, please check out our IT Symposium page for more details.

Where you come in

We need volunteers for this great event! With many different schools across Texas, there are a lot of High Schools that we want to ensure have a great experience. So, if you are a member we are asking you consider joining us on the 13th to make this incredible event happen, and it is not without it’s rewards! Not only is it something you can add to your volunteer experience (coordinating an IT event for hundreds of students), and an AITP t-shirt, but it will also earn you serious membership points to get you to Nationals!

So, please consider e-mailing aitp@txstateaitp.com, for the opportunity to make this event excellent!

It’s that time once again! Tonight we will have our monthly Chapter meeting in LBJ 3-9.1, at 5pm. Randy Sabbagh from Charles Schwab will be joining us, and he will be discussing Technology Resilience. This is something you definitely don’t wanna miss. Plus, after this meeting we will have an info session with Charles Schwab from 6:30 – 7:30 in McCoy 336!

We’ll have pizza, so bring yourselves, and your questions for Mr. Sabbagh tonight at 5pm!

 

 

Texas State University AITP will be hosting the 11th annual IT Symposium on Friday, October 13th, 2017! 

Below is the invitation to the 2017 IT Symposium

2017 TxState AITP IT Symposium Invitation

AITP is looking forward to seeing all attendees in the fall! Please visit the IT Symposium Page of our site often for further updates on the event.

For any questions, please contact Kevin Jetton ( kj02@txstate.edu), Chinonyem Agu (cja73@txstate.edu), or Brittany Garza (b_g132@txstate.edu).

This last Thursday AITP celebrated its members and having an amazing year at Casa Maria’s. After socializing and seeing a slide show of pictures from the last year we congraduated the winners of AITP competitions from both Regionals and Nationals. We also looked to the future by congratulating our new officers for the next school year. Lastly, Shawn Farrell from Volaris Group Consulting gave us a very enlightening presentation discussing the do’s and dont’s on how to maximize your earning potential.

Again we would like to thank everyone, members and faculty alike, for the amazing year we all had together in AITP! Big congratulations to all members who will be graduating this May and August! And to those who will be continuing at Texas State, we hope to see you and many more new members in the Fall for another amazing year at AITP. Good luck on your finals and have a great summer everyone!

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Today nine students, both AITP members, and non-members got the chance to visit the RBFCU headquarters in San Antonio where we got to speak with their CIO and four other members of their IT team. After a presentation, some short speeches, and a Q&A session we then got to take a tour of their building which included a visit to their very cool (both literally and figuratively) server room! We would like to thank RBFCU for the opportunity to come and visit them and would also like to thank the students who joined us on the trip!

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Reminder:

On April 20th we will be having our Appreciation Banquet at Casa Maria. Tickets are $25 and you can pay either through Paypal on the homepage of our website near the bottom left (preferable) or you can pay when you arrive. Our guest speaker Shawn Farrell from Volaris Group Consulting will be discussing the Do’s and Dont’s to maximize your earning Potential.

Date: April 20

Time: 5:30PM – 8:30PM

Banquet Ticket: $25

Address: Casa Maria, 706 S Guadalupe St, San Marcos, TX 78666

Food: Beef & chicken fajitas, beef & chicken enchiladas, rice, beans, chips, salsa, tortillas, pico de gallo, cheese, guacamole, sour cream, lettuce.

Dress: Business casual or better

Speaker: Shawn Farrell – Volaris Group Consulting

Topic: Do’s & Dont’s to maximize earning potential

Be sure to purchase your ticket on our website. The PayPal button is located at the bottom left of the website home page.

This year, Texas State AITP traveled to compete in the annual AITP National Collegiate Competition held in St. Louis, Missouri. We traveled 854 miles and had 30 attendees, all competing in a total of 90 contests! We would like to congratulate the following Texas State AITP members for their outstanding performance during the conference:

Microsoft Office Solutions:
Honorable Mention – Michelle Leipnik & Cody Kern

Mobile Application Development:
2nd Place – Philip Thomas
3rd Place – Ashley Morris & Rianna Asebedo
Honorable Mention – Samantha Ciaramitaro & Bryon Baez

Network Design:
2nd Place – Aaron Cartwright & Katrina Kuzmich

Security:
Honorable Mention – Tyler Ellison

Our local AITP chapter as a whole also won the following awards:

• Outstanding AITP Student Chapter of the Year – Region 3
• Association Outstanding Student Chapter of the Year (2nd year in a row!)
• TOP Monkey Award (2nd year in a row!)

Attendance Stats:

404    Student Attendees
61      Faculty Attendees
48      Sponsors, Speakers & Exhibitors
17      CompTIA Staff & CompTIA AITP Executive Council Members
9        Judges, Proctors & Volunteers
6        NCC Committee Members & Staff
5        IT Professional Attendees
5        Guests

555    Total “Pre-Audited” Attendance from 48 Colleges & Universities

A huge thank you to those who attended and everyone who helped make this trip possible!

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Special thanks to RBFCU for coming to speak to us for this month’s chapter meeting! In our guest’s presentation, we were shown the Black report which says that 43% of hackers spend only 2-6 hours to compromise a target and 50% of hackers change their attack methods after every engagement. We were also told of how the impact on a business for getting hacked is a loss of around $216 per record stolen. And that only 40% of cyber threats come from the outside while the rest is from insiders (44.5%) and operator errors. The cybersecurity opportunities that were mentioned include hybrid cloud architecture, data proliferation & big data, mobile workforce, and vulnerabilities. Lastly, we learned that the cybersecurity skills you need are not just education, experience, and certifications, but soft skills are very much needed too.

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Reminders:

This Friday 4/14 we are having a field trip to RBFCU’s IT campus in San Antonio. While we are there, we will get to see their campus, take a tour of the data center, and hear about the different IT opportunities RBFCU has to offer. Be sure to sign up at the link below to be able to go as we only have room for 30 on the trip. You can also add yourself to the carpool list if you need a ride or can provide one. Check the calendar or your email for the address of the campus.  The deadline to sign up is Thursday, April 13th at noon.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MKbNv5WSYix_NRdKks5U-YyJ3sfD-nitOJh0Cncrjt0/edit?usp=sharing

On April 20th we will be having our Appreciation Banquet at Casa Maria. Tickets are $25 and you can pay either through Paypal on our website on the homepage near the bottom left (preferable) or you can pay when you arrive. Our guest speaker Shawn Farrell from Volaris Group Consulting will be discussing the Do’s and Dont’s to maximize your earning Potential.