A student organization focused on computing has created an endowed scholarship fund to help its members for years to come.
The Association for Information Technology Professionals (AITP), a student organization in the College of Technology, recently set up the fund to offer additional assistance to members. Most of the funds came from AITP’s annual Computer Roundtable career fair.
“We’ve been hosting Computer Roundtable for so many years, and it has allowed us to sponsor our students in many ways, such as sending them to the annual National Collegiate Conference (NCC),” said Ryan Green, AITP president and chair of the Computer Roundtable. “We felt this scholarship was something we could do to help students. It’s going to be there forever now.”
Green said the AITP executive board will decide who receives the scholarship, which will be awarded for the first time in Fall 2015. The ideal recipient, Green said, will be a student who is highly involved in AITP and who makes everyone’s experience with the organization better.
As the endowment grows, more than one scholarship may be able to be awarded.
“As we invite companies to participate in the Roundtable, they will see they are making a difference to our students,” Green said.
Spurring growth
The Fall 2014 Roundtable was one of the most successful in AITP’s history. It attracted 80 employers and more than 800 students. And Green sees room for even more growth as they expand their focus to all computing majors on campus.
“We want to be more inclusive of all computing majors and break down perceived barriers,” Green said. “We want to help market the variety of skill sets Purdue computing students have.”
He also wants to see growth in AITP membership by attracting majors from across campus. The organization hosts bi-weekly meetings where students can learn from computing professionals and have fun.
Representatives from Riot Games, makers of League of Legends, were on campus this fall and will return again to talk about how the company scaled up a chat system for more than a million users. Others from computational knowledge engine Wolfram Alpha will visit and discuss some of the technologies that support their products.
Students interested in joining AITP can find out more by emailing the organization.
(Photo: A student registers at the 2014 Computer Roundtable, an event that helped fund the AITP endowed scholarship. Photo by Michael Takeda, Purdue Recreational Sports).