WTAMU student Vance Morris received top honors by being chosen for the annual Destination z Enterprise Computing Scholarship program. There were 29 applicants, and because of his successful mainframe computing work he was rewarded highest scorer out of the 12 chosen for the scholarship.

Due to his high placement, Morris also received the Greg Zaubi Memorial Scholarship worth $2500, which is considered an honor in mainframe education.

According to the Destination z web site, students must have demonstrated excellence in their enterprise computing coursework with plans for continued growth on the mainframe platform in their academic and professional careers to be considered for the scholarship.

“Vance is a very serious young man and very motivated at what he is doing,” H. Paul Haiduk, Computer Science Program Coordinator, said.

Rhonda Dittfurth, Engineering and Computer Science Outreach Coordinator, said that Haiduk often says receiving the Greg Zaubi Memorial Scholarship in the engineering field is like receiving an Oscar in the entertainment world.“The fact that Vance won the top spot in this scholarship competition not only is huge for him as far as looking for placement in computer science particularly in mainframing, it goes to the caliber of the education he has gotten at WT in the computer science department,” Dittfurth said.

Morris’ strong participation in mainframe computing began during the summer of 2010 when WT became involved with the IBM Academic initiative. Morris said that IBM provides the mainframe and gives students the opportunity to learn how to use the system because there was a recognized need for universities to get involved in mainframe computing again.

“I saw his interest and saw his desire to learn so I gave him as much leeway as I could give him, and he’s running with it. As a result of his efforts, we are the first university in the world to deploy something that is a mainframe emulator,” Haiduk said.

He played a big role in getting WT’s coursework mainframe system up and running.  At the beginning of each semester he uses the system to configure accounts for students.

“We are basically responsible for all the maintenance and upkeep of our little portion of that mainframe,” Morris said.

This past fall semester, Morris competed in the annual Master the Mainframe competition sponsored by IBM and placed third after going up against almost 4000 other participants from around Canada and the United States. This was the second time Morris entered the competition. He originally got involved because it was a requirement for one of his classes.

“So, not knowing anything about the mainframe at the time, some of us students just jumped into the contest and did our best,” Morris said.

The Master the Mainframe competition is designed to teach students the basic skills of mainframing to make them more competitive in the enterprise computing field. A mainframe is basically the central processing unit or computer that supports and works together with other workstations.