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Dana Urrutia, 678-495-3638
durrutia@gwinnetttech.edu

April 14, 2006

Gwinnett Tech IT Students Receive National Awards

AITP Recognizes GTC Collegiate Chapter for Design Projects

Gwinnett Technical College’s chapter of Association of Information Technology Professionals (AITP) received two awards at the national AITP competition recently in Dallas.

“This is Gwinnett Tech’s best showing at an AITP national competition,” said Dr. John Thacher, CIS program director at Gwinnett Tech and AITP faculty advisor to the collegiate chapter, which has been competing at the national level since 1996.

Gwinnett Tech students were competing against peers from four-year institutions including Purdue and University of Iowa, and bested them in such areas as web site design and banner design.

A team consisting of Gwinnett Tech’s AITP chapter president Amanda Lenczewski, Hope Hackett, Matt Maher and Dawn Olivares received honorable mention in the national AITP chapter web site competition. “The team worked on the web site for about six weeks, spending many hours and late nights to finish it by the deadline for submission to the judging committee,” Thacher said.

Pierre Sanchez, vice president for the collegiate AITP chapter, also received honorable mention at the conference for the web banner he designed and built over the course of a month. Sanchez is enrolled in the computer programming degree program at Gwinnett Tech.

In addition, Sanchez and fellow chapter member Andrew Wills both came in third place at the regional AITP competition in Birmingham, Ala., for banner design and systems analysis and design, respectively.

The Association of Information Technology Professionals (AITP) is a professional association serving more than 7,000 professional and student members from the Information Technology community in the United States, Canada and other countries around the world. For more information on AITP, visit www.aitp.org.

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About Gwinnett Tech
Gwinnett Technical College, one of Georgia's largest technical colleges, is committed to delivering relevant knowledge to meet the workforce training needs of its community. The college offers more than 50 associate degree, diploma and certificate programs and hundreds of seminars, workshops and courses providing specialized training. GTC is Gwinnett County's largest provider of corporate training and now serves residents and businesses in north Fulton County. Gwinnett Technical College is accredited by the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools to award the associate degree. Contact the Commission on Colleges at 1866 Southern Lane, Decatur, Georgia 30033-4097,404-679-4500, www.sacscoc.org for questions about the accreditation of Gwinnett Technical College. For more information, visit www.GwinnettTech.edu.

A unit of the Technical College System of Georgia.