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ACS Foundation Supports 114 ICT Scholarships in 2004

ACS staff, Information Age

17/06/2004 08:51:58

The first awards night, held at NSW Parliament House in Sydney on May 20, included the presentation of a scholarship to Shemin Tejani, the student who topped the HSC in Computing Studies last year.

Since that event, scholarships have been awarded to students at 23 different universities around Australia, bringing to 120 the number of scholarships the Foundation has supported since it was established just two and a half years ago. Negotiations are continuing for at least a dozen more scholarships to be awarded over the next couple of months.

An initiative of the Australian Computer Society, the ACS Foundation was established in August 2001 as a vehicle to provide scholarships to help attract students into the ICT sector and to fund worthwhile ICT-related research.

“The ACS Foundation has awarded scholarships with a total value of $3.9 million since its inception, which is an outstanding achievement for a body that is just 30 months old,” said ACS Foundation chair, John Ridge.

“The calibre of the scholarship students demonstrates that we’re succeeding in our goal of attracting the best and brightest young minds into the ICT sector to help build strong leadership for the next generation of ICT professionals.”

Ridge also paid tribute to the ACS, Compuware and John Debrincat, formerly of Compuware and now with eCorner, for the critical roles they played in enabling the launch of the Foundation and giving it a strong base from which to grow.

The presentation also welcomed key individual supporters into membership of the Foundation, with ACS President, Edward Mandla, ACS NSW Chair, Kumar Parakala, Altiris managing director, Geoff Masters, eCorner managing director, John Debrincat, and InterSystems managing director, Dennis Tebbutt, all receiving membership.

“We’re enormously grateful for the on-going support of dedicated corporate supporters like Altiris, American Express, Compuware, eCorner, GAMAA and Gammasonics, as well as the assistance we’ve received from the various state governments,” he said.

InterSystems donates development tools to Foundation students

Database vendor, InterSystems has donated CACHE a free development copy of its CACHÉ post-relational database software, along with a textbook and training course, for every student in the ACS Foundation program.

“This is a very welcome initiative from InterSystems,” said John Ridge, chair of the ACS Foundation Board.

“Not only has this company donated software and training with a total retail value of around $230,000 to Foundation students, but in doing so it has provided them with an opportunity to extend their knowledge and skills.

“We’re delighted to be able to enhance the value of our scholarships in such a relevant way and are actively seeking opportunities to partner with other vendors or service providers for similar proposals,” he said.

Under the agreement with InterSystems, every student will be eligible to receive a multi-user licence of the CACHÉ post-relational database development software together with a copy of the text book “Object-Oriented Application Development” and training, with a total value of $1950, along with unlimited 24-hour technical support.

InterSystems’ Campus Programs Manager, Dr Michael Silvester, said the company saw the ACS Foundation initiative as a natural extension of its strong and growing relationship with the academic community.

“We already offer free academic licensing and work closely with several of the leading universities in student training, course development and student project evaluation, enabling their staff to teach and conduct research with our products. There is tremendous benefit in exposing our products to some of the brightest young people studying ICT, through the ACS Foundation, and we’re looking forward to them becoming active members of the growing CACHÉ community.”

Dr Silvester said InterSystems will also give a 15 per cent discount to any ACS Foundation student who decides to purchase a production licence in the future; an additional five per cent of the licence fee will be donated back to the Foundation to help fund more scholarships.