FREDERICTON – What started out as a hobby has earned a New Brunswick Community College (NBCC) learner a prestigious industry award for innovation.
Calvin Buckley, a first year Information Technology: Programmer Analyst student at the Fredericton Campus, won the 2019 Student Innovation Award from Common Education Foundation, the world’s largest association of IBM technology users. The award recognizes Buckley’s work to enable the IBM i platform to run the open source implementation of Microsoft’s .NET framework.
“I wondered, how hard could it be?” said Buckley. “And I decided to give it a shot. I went from knowing very little about the platform to being a little bit of a domain expert.”
The Student Innovation Award recognizes innovation in Information Systems, Enterprise Computing, Computer Science, Information Technology or related fields of study. Buckley, as winner, earned a coveted spot in a four-day education session on the latest topics, presented by industry experts, as well as significant exposure in the IT community.
Buckley didn’t undertake the project with the goal of winning an award. He just wanted to work on something that would challenge his skills and be useful to fellow platform users.
“It was just a good way to keep my skills up,” he said.
Buckley has always been interested in IT so it’s no surprise he has chosen the field for his post-secondary education. He chose NBCC for its two-year program.
“NBCC is a great place to get your credentials. It’s a fast program and much more affordable than four-year programs,” he noted.
With flexible educational programming that is responsive to the social and economic needs of the Province, New Brunswick Community College (NBCC) is a provincially-recognized public post-secondary institution reputed for producing skilled, knowledgeable graduates who are contributing to the Province’s prosperity. In addition to one- and two-year certificate and diploma programs, NBCC provides specialized and customized training to meet the needs of specific sectors and communities, and delivers apprenticeship training to more than 1,800 learners annually. Find out more by visiting www.nbcc.ca
