The University of Houston's cloudathon@UH – an annual competitive team opportunity for students to showcase their cloud-based architecture, configurations and operations skills – reached new heights this spring as registration and attendance soared to record levels and professional partners joined from around the world to make the event yet another success.
Professionals travelled from across the US as well as from Mexico and Spain to act as judges and industry representatives for the all-day competition this March, with one AWS hiring manager from Mexico City ultimately interviewing and hiring students on the spot for upcoming summer positions.
Organized by instructional associate professor of computer information systems (CIS) José C. Martínez, Ph.D., the event is designed not only to recognize students for their ability to apply academic concepts to real-world scenarios, but to offer opportunities to hone the collaborative skills that will make them invaluable additions to the industry upon graduation.
"We're changing the culture now – we aren't just preparing students with skills. We're preparing people who are willing to stand up and say what they think and show off their knowledge, and that's very important in the industry. People need to be able to contribute, to collaborate, and to add value to their companies," Martínez said. "These students are getting experience that is very important not just for their development, but also for the industry overall."
“All these achievements and successes by the students and the great moment we are enjoying at CIS is the result of the continued improvement of the content of the CIS curriculum," he continued. "It is a non-stop effort to make sure our curriculum is current and relevant to the industry needs. We work closely with the industry to make sure we acknowledge and accommodate their needs as well. We are very ambitious: our goal is to be have the best CIS program in the country, where we develop students that are industry-ready not just in knowledge, skills and practice, but who also know how to be team members, know how to work individually, and appreciate that they need to learn the business to add real value to their organizations.”
Martínez hopes to leverage that added value for the industry toward further corporate partnerships and sponsorships for the competition.
"We have the processes, value, and skills to make this a mutually beneficial relationship," he added. His sentiments were echoed by students from many of the 2024 competition's winning and placing teams, including CIS junior and Future IT Professionals (FITP) Vice President and the event's lead coordinator Sai Todupunoori.
"My passion to lead and to take the initiative for a lot of these things comes from seeing the benefit of being a competitor in the previous year, and also seeing that there are things that we can continue to improve upon," Todupunoori said. "The experience has been great so far, from speaking with lots of companies to get their sponsorship for the event and to further explain to them the idea and the benefits of this competition. It's been amazing because I've been able to do so many things out of my comfort zone."
He intends to return as the lead coordinator for next year's competition as well.
"Winning second place [this year] gave me that confidence boost that said yes, whatever I'm learning, I'm able to apply in real-life and real-world examples," said participating CIS junior Fathima Afridi. "I have to give credit to Professor Martinez for his support and his guidance. I was able to do what I was able to do because he is such a good mentor to all of us, and he always makes sure that we are comfortable. I've never really had a professor who's like him."
When asked if she plans to participate again in next year's cloudathon@UH competition: "Oh yeah, I plan on winning next year. I'm going to win it because I know there's nothing stopping me."