HOT SPRINGS, Ark. - Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts senior Calvin MacKenzie was the only high school student to win a place on the “Wall of Fame” in IBM’s sixth annual Master the Mainframe Contest.
The contest is for university students, but high school students are encouraged to participate. This year’s contest attracted 3,537 students from 400 schools in the U.S. and Canada.
MacKenzie placed third and will receive an Apple iPad and a two-day expense-paid trip to the IBM mainframe plant in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
The contest was divided into three parts and began in October 2010. To successfully complete Part 3, students had to complete a series of difficult and time-consuming tasks, mastering the inner-workings of mainframe software products, security protocols, multiple programming languages and various utilities.