IBM's Master The Mainframe Contest

In 2009, IBM has hosted the fifth annual Master The Mainframe contest. It is a contest designed for college and university students in the United States and Canada (except for Quebec). High school students were also encouraged to compete. The contest requires no experience at all in handling mainframes, and permitted students to compete for prizes including:

• $100 pre-paid debit cards
• Lenovo S10-2 netbook computers
• 22" Samsung LCD HDTVs
• Trips to the mainframe lab in Poughkeepsie, NY
• Custom Master the Mainframe T-shirts

Being able to participate in the contest allowed competitors to gain new skills in working with mainframes as well as help them to become more competitive for jobs in the field. To assist in this endeavor, those who finished the second part of the contest were afforded the opportunity to upload their resumes to the IBM Student Opportunity System which can only be done via invitation and could lead to employment with IBM itself.

In the 2009 contest, St. Ambrose featured 20 registrations for the contest. Of the 20, 7 completed the first part and received a T-shirt which included Davenport, IA on the back. 2 finished the second part, and 2 finished the final part as well.