Columbus State teams with Manifest Solutions for fifth-annual “Hackathon” student event April 17

Campus News | Wednesday, April 14, 2021

Columbus State Community College and Columbus IT consulting firm Manifest Solutions are again partnering to offer students at Columbus State, Central State University and Columbus City Schools an interactive and collaborative virtual “Hackathon” education event for young programmers to hone their skills and learn more about opportunities within the Information Technology field.

Columbus State is in its fifth year of offering Central Ohio students a hackathon event. The College started engaging its students and area high school students in 2017 with a “capture the flag” exercise in 2017 focusing on learning defense against cyberattacks. Since then, the event has evolved to encompass software and application development within a collegial project environment mirroring actual development industry practices.

Participants in the April 17 event will focus on open source project development choosing among the programming languages of C# (.NET), Java, JavaScript and Python, offering students the opportunity to gain experience with version control, writing unit tests, and working with robust open source code bases. They will also have the opportunity to learn more about Manifest Solutions and careers in the IT consulting field.

“Manifest Solutions continues to support regional student engagement as a partner to higher education offerings because we know the critical importance of building out our industry’s future talent resources,” said Chris Judd, CIO. “Tomorrow’s top programmers can emerge from a variety of educational pathways if provided the relevant opportunities to learn the latest in-demand skills. We are proud to keep growing this annual event with Columbus State and keep it going virtually through the challenges the ongoing pandemic has thrown our way.”

“Supporting a hackathon at Columbus State underscores the opportunity available within the IT field for our associate degree graduates and certificate earners,” said David Nowak, interim chairperson of Information Systems Technology. “These are top careers for future growth and job demand will only accelerate. Employers are increasingly motivated to bring two-year graduates and post-secondary credential holders into the workforce, even while they are still engaged in studies. A four-year degree is no longer a barrier to entry and opportunities for advancement, as long as the skills and talent are there.”

The event on April 17 will feature remarks from Ohio Lt. Gov. Jon Husted, Columbus State President David Harrison, and Manifest Solutions Chief Technology Officer Chris Judd. The event is closed to the public, but the media is invited to attend and can do so by coordinating with David Cofer.

About Manifest Solutions
Manifest Solutions Corp is an Ohio-based Information Systems consulting firm founded in 1994. Our mission is to deliver excellence in EVERYTHING we do for EVERY client we serve. To this end we seek out, recruit, develop and retain individuals who possess the entrepreneurial spirit, outstanding business and technical skills and a shared mindset of commitment to quality service. 

Our goal is to continually raise the industry standard for our clients and our employees through innovative, quality-based services and business practices. We believe our clients must benefit from our presence in their organizations. We accomplish this through sharing Manifest's business and technical expertise and transferring our knowledge to our client's staff. 

About Columbus State
Columbus State Community College (www.cscc.edu) is one of the largest colleges in Ohio, serving approximately 45,000 students annually. Committed to equity and accessibility, and driven to innovate on behalf of our students and our community at large, Columbus State is positioned as Central Ohio’s front door to higher education and economic prosperity: We create new paths to meaningful careers for students and fuel the talent pipeline for regional employers. Embracing a partnership mindset, Columbus State collaborates with university partners to provide affordable bachelor’s degree options, and with the region’s major employers to develop relevant, real-world educational offerings that produce in-demand workforce talent.

Columbus State’s commitment to diverse, equitable and inclusive outcomes for our students and a better society is reflected in our recognition as the 2019 Leah Meyer Austin Award winner by Achieving the Dream, a national network dedicated to eliminating equity gaps in community college education. Columbus State is an Achieving the Dream Leader College of Distinction and a 2021 member of its Racial Equity Leadership Academy initiative to further institutional racial equity change.

 

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