Students win three national championships in IT competition

The students’ performance earned Georgia Gwinnett College the first Top Performing School Award, as well as the college’s fourth national championship in database design in only five years of competition.

Georgia Gwinnett College’s national champions and their competition categories from the 2018 U.S. Information Technology Collegiate Conference are Chelsea D’Alessandro, ’18, and Robert Strong, ’18 – database design; Michael Strickland, ’19 – security; and Daniel Sales, ’19, and Bess Burnett, ’18 – mobile application development. All are information technology majors.

The School of Science and Technology trophy cases are getting crowded now that GGC students have won three more national championships in information technology competitions.

Earlier this spring, a team of information technology (IT) majors from Georgia Gwinnett traveled to San Antonio, Texas, to test their skills against the nation’s best and brightest in the U.S. Information Technology Collegiate Conference (USITCC) technical competitions.

They came back with three national championships.

Bess Burnett, ’18, and Daniel Sales, ’19, won first place in mobile application development, while Michael Strickland, ’19, took first in the security category.

“In more than 30 years, no other school has swept all four places in a single category.”

– Dr. Lissa Pollacia

GGC dominated the database design category. Chelsea D’Alessandro, ’18, and Robert Strong, ’18, won the national championship while Bess Burnett, ’18, and Johanna Timmer, ’18, took second place. Neal Klemenc, ’18, and Joseph Tsegaye, ’18, placed third and Steven Beteag, ’18, and Jarrod Bailey, ’20, placed fourth.

“In more than 30 years, no other school has swept all four places in a single category,” said Dr. Lissa Pollacia, professor of information technology and assistant dean in the School of Science and Technology.

The students’ performance earned GGC the first Top Performing School Award, as well as the college’s fourth national championship in database design in only five years of competition.

In 2013, Kevin Jones, ’13, and Joe Armendariz, ’13, won first place in database design – the college’s first national championship in either academics or athletics. in 2015, when GGC also won national titles in mobile application development and Java development. At the time, Pollacia noted that she had never seen a team win three national titles. GGC has now done it twice.

Matt Berger, ’16, and Alejandro Guzman, ’16, won GGC’s third national title in database design in 2016.

Over the years, GGC students also have placed in several categories. Yury Park, ’15, and Quan Tran, ’17, won second place in the Code-a-Thon category in 2015.

“In the Code-a-Thon, you must complete as many algorithmic questions as possible within the hours allotted,” said Park. Weekly practice sessions with faculty helped the pair strategize about how to approach problems, manage time, use design short cuts and apply coding methods and testing.

Formerly an English major and an attorney, Park came to GGC for a career change, rekindling his love of computer science from many years ago. Now with a master’s in the field, he is working in artificial intelligence (AI) research.

“I could not have done any of this without gaining a solid foundation from my GGC professors, and the competition was a big part of that,” Park said. “It got me into tackling AI problems more effectively and creatively.”

“Our IT student competitors continue to make us proud,” said GGC President Stas Preczewski. “To do well in such competitions is impressive, but to continue to win top honors illustrates the sustained excellence of our IT students, faculty and curriculum.”

GGC’s entire competition team was recognized at a recent Lawrenceville City Council meeting.