A well named home page with a professional feel and accessible links—that’s what regional judges with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Student Branch Web Site Contest had to say about a University of Houston Cullen College of Engineering student’s winning Web site.
Joshua Kovitz, a sophomore electrical engineering major, took home the first place award for region 5 at the contest in late April.
“I was completely surprised and all of IEEE was exuberant about it,” said Kovitz, the IT director for the UH student branch. “I went in thinking I would be disqualified because I didn’t quite meet a few of the guidelines. I was completely blown away when I had won the competition.”
All sites entered were designed for their local IEEE student branch. Submissions were graded on content, navigability, originality, overall presentation, portability and load time. It’s the same criteria that will determine the winner in the international portion of the competition beginning May 15.
As a first place winner, Kovitz will get a chance to compete in the international portion with students in six regions based in the U.S. as well as the four other international regions that include areas such as Asia, Africa and Europe.
Similar to the regional competition, the qualifying students from each of the 10 regions must forward their Web site URL’s to judges for consideration. The top three students win cash prizes totaling $1,000, $750 and $500, respectively. Winners will be announced in June.
Kovitz first took interest in web design in 2006 from a friend who is a professional web designer.
Shortly after Kovitz joined the UH IEEE student branch in May 2007 he began redesigning the organization’s Web site.
“I always enjoyed Web site design and programming,” Kovitz said. “Over that summer I hard coded all the HTML.”