Students
representing the St. Louis Chapter of the Black Data Processing
Associates placed in top 10 in the High School Computer Competition
at the 2011 National BDPA conference held in
Chicago. In addition, one of
the students, James Fields, came in 2
“font-family: Verdana;”>nd “font-family: Verdana;”>place in the Xbox competition.
“font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: Verdana;”>The students were sponsored by Monsanto Corporation.
“font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: Verdana;”>This year the St. Louis Chapter had several sites for training, Computer Village, Clyde C. Miller and Visitation Academy. The trainers and coordinators at the local sites were Tom Bast at Clyde C. Miller, Beverly Byrd/John Cooper at Visitation Academy and Don Holt/Toni Love at Computer Village.
“font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: Verdana;”>Students from the various sites participated in a local competition, which was held at Monsanto. Twelve students were selected from the various sites to participate in extensive training at Monsanto. Of the 12 students, five and one alternate were selected to participate in the national competition.
“font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: Verdana;”>The trainers and coordinators were Tiffany Jones, Al Ware, Cherno Jallow, John Cooper and Oseyi Ikuenobe – all Monsanto employees – and Toni Love an employee of Ameren and the president of the St. Louis Chapter of BDPA.
“font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: Verdana;”>The students selected to represent the St. Louis Chapter at the national competition were DaShawn Staples – Clyde C. Miller, Cameron Smith – Clyde C. Miller, Della Anjeh – Visitation Academy, Christine Miller – Visitation Academy, Jacqueline Nobbe – Visitation Academy and James Fields, an eighth grader at LaSalle Springs Middle School and now attending Eureka High School.
“font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: Verdana;”>This program has been in existence for 26 years. Throughout the year, local chapters conduct SITES (Student Information Technology Education and Scholarship) training programs for the youth in their communities. These programs are designed to expose our youth to the concepts of computers and give them the expertise to develop web applications. Volunteers around the nation encourage these young people to seek higher levels of education, and groom many of them to become the next generation of IT professionals. Organizers are currently recruiting new students as well as volunteers to help with training.
“font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: Verdana;”>For more information, contact
“mailto:email@bdpa-stlouis.org”>email@bdpa-stlouis.org
