Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google


Avnet Games Winners Showcase Tech Prowess

  • By Dian Schaffhauser
  • 04/27/09

The Avnet Tech Games are over, and nine of the 57 student teams that entered from Arizona colleges and universities have won scholarships for proving their abilities to work through real-life technology challenges. Nearly 200 students vied for top honors in Avnet's fourth-annual competition, which is composed of nine separate events. Among the challenges, students showcased how to use technology to address a humanitarian need, create a solar-powered lamp, and construct a virtual server environment.

A panel of judges made up of executives from technology firms, engineers, and technical experts selected the winners based on their ability to meet the technical requirements of the task, apply innovative approaches to the solution, and demonstrate professional skills.

Among the winners, Mesa Community College dominated the Premise One "Networking within the Enterprise" game, in which teams compete to connect, configure and effectively secure a computer network in support of a fictitious company's business demands including surveillance, paging, e-mail, IP phones, and Web requirements.

University of Advancing Technology won Belkin's "Patch Panel Madness," where teams build a working data network using a provided network diagram, cabling, patch panels, switches and racks.

Arizona State University, W.P. Carey School of Business prevailed in the VMware "Virtualization Challenge," in which teams are given three unique physical enterprise computer platform scenarios with the goal of producing a three to five year roadmap maximizing their business value while factoring in proper ROI and architectures with consideration for the current virtualization trends.

Next year's tech games take place on April 10 at the University of Advancing Technology in Tempe, AZ.

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • Hootsuite

    Beyond the Feed: How Higher Ed Turns Social Media Into a Measurable Enrollment Engine

    More than half of prospective students research programs on social media before visiting a university website, and nearly half will skip applying to a school that looks inactive online. Hootsuite, the all-in-one social OS platform trusted by more than 2,000 higher education institutions, helps campus teams turn everyday posts into measurable outcomes, from applications to alumni giving.

  • A glowing digital brain with neural connections and light trails

    AI Giants Warn It May Be Time to Slow Down

    For years, leaders in the artificial intelligence industry have warned that increasingly capable AI systems could eventually become dangerous, all the while continuing to race to build them. Now, their sentiments have changed.

  • lock icons, shields, and glowing data paths

    Research Studies Suggest AI Is Accelerating Familiar Cyber Attacks

    Research released around the recent Black Hat USA 2026 conference suggests that artificial intelligence is increasing the speed and scale of cybersecurity activity without replacing the attack methods defenders already face.

  • digital brain with network connections

    Microsoft Moving to Internally Developed AI Models in Office Apps

    Microsoft is reportedly using its own in-house artificial intelligence models to handle some workloads in Excel and Outlook, offering new evidence that the company is moving its AI strategy beyond model development and into large-scale cost reduction.