Universities: Sponsor a team to Canada

2010/01/10

NURJEHAN MOHAMED

FINAL-year Information Technology student Mohd Amin Mohamed Arip is going to Canada — with your help. The 24-year-old, who recently organised a successful case study challenge for Business Information Technology students in Malaysia, is now embarking on another quest — raise enough funds for his participation in an international competition in Canada.

The Universiti Kuala Lumpur Malaysian Institute of Information Technology student and his teammates Huzaifah Jamaludin and Mohd Azizul Dahalan have made it to the finals of the Case IT International Undergraduate MIS Case Competition (CaseIT) 2010 at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada, happening at the end of March.

The contest is touted as the largest Management Information Systems (MIS) competition in North America which brings together Business IT students from around the world and the North American continent.

It calls for teams of three students to deliberate on a specific case study in 24 hours and propose a solution in front of a panel of judges comprising industry heads.

“Just to qualify for the finals is a huge deal for us,” says Mohd Amin.

His team won one of 12 spots to join CaseIT 2009’s top three teams and the host university in Canada, and is one of three universities from Asia to be chosen for the finals — the others are CaseIT 2009 winner National University of Singapore and Hong Kong Baptist University.

While Mohd Amin has competed in a similar competition organised by Singapore Management University last year, this would be the first time for Huzaifah and Mohd Azizul.

“My housemate, who’s a firstyear student, is taking note of our preparation so that he may try his luck in the future,” says Huzaifah, a third-year Computer Engineering student.

“I am hoping to learn more about the business side of IT, which is very different from what I study,” says Mohd Azizul, who is a thirdyear IT student.

He adds that the most appealing aspect of the competition is the chance to meet his counterparts from other countries and exposure to a different business mentality.

(From left) Huzaifah Jamaludin, Mohd Amin Mohamed Arip and Mohd Azizul Dahalan need to raise RM50,000.

“From what I know, people in the West are more willing to take risks with new technologies to start up companies compared with M a l ay s i a n s , ” he says.

Mohd Amin is eager to see how the North American teams would solve a given case study and if their solutions might be applied to Malaysian companies.

While excited about being one of 16 teams to make it to the CaseIT finals, the students are worried about how they are going to fund their trip and participation in the contest.

The team would need to raise close to RM50,000 for travel, registration, accommodation and daily allowances of the three students, a coach and a liaison off icer.

“We have approached a few companies,” says Mohd Amin, adding that he hopes IT-related companies might be willing to partially sponsor them.

Meanwhile, the team members are preparing themselves for the competition by improving their presentation skills, beefing up their technical knowledge and doing practice sessions with case studies.

For details on the competition, visit http://caseit.org/ or contact Mohd Amin at 012-243-4362 or amin.ar ip@gmail.com