Accenture employees and ITS alumni Juan Echeverry, left, and Neil Okonak, right, pose with Accenture Challenge graduate student winners May 26.

Echeverry, left, and Okonak, right, pose with three of the four undergraduate student winners of the Accenture Challenge. / Photos by Maisie Crow

By Kristen Rapin, kr323705@ohio.edu

ATHENS, Ohio (June 19, 2009)--Teams of J. Warren McClure School of Information and Telecommunication Systems (ITS) students competed in the second annual Accenture Challenge on May 26. The two-week competition, created by ITS alumni working at Accenture, a technology consulting firm, was part of ITS Day 2009.

This year’s challenge had student teams responding to the real-world needs of M.O. Holdings, a fictional company.

“The challenge is an opportunity for students to step out of the box and get a flavor for the real world,” said Juan Echeverry, BSC ’05, who is employed by Accenture. “The students here at ITS are so talented, and this competition gives them the experience to better understand what is happening out in the real world.”

Teams consisted of students enrolled in the graduate-level course Strategic Issues and the undergraduate-level course Management Communication Resources.  

Undergraduate student Devin McCormick believes the challenge’s proposal process offers the teams a unique experience.

“As an Accenture challenge participant, I learned about writing professional proposals in a telecommunications field,” said McCormick. “We learned the demands of a multi-national corporation when building a large-scale data center.”

The challenge began with a conference call with the mock company M.O. Holdings and ended two weeks later with the presentations of proposals to Accenture employees, acting as the M.O. Holdings board of directors.

“In a company, this project would typically have a six-week response,” said graduate student Trey Fleming. “It’s a big challenge for us to do in basically a week. It’s teaching us how to make sure a solution fits technically and balance it with investment, both in time and money.”

Echeverry and fellow alumni Neil Okonak, BSC ’02, and Matt Raider, BSC ’03, designed the challenge and gave of their time for this year’s competition as well.

“I was always very grateful for the opportunities I had here as a student, so hosting this challenge, I feel, is a pleasure and an obligation for me to give back,” said Okonak.  “At Accenture we’re always on the lookout for talented people, so it’s in our company’s best interest to help these students out as well.”

Graduate and undergraduate winners were announced during the Accenture Challenge Awards May 26 in Walter Hall. The graduate students winners were Boxing He, Richard Lee, Wendell Walter and Yuan Wang; undergraduate student winners were Thomas Clark, Samantha Deville, Devin McCormick and Marcus Strenkowski. 

For more information about the ITS school and other highlights of this year’s ITS Day, please visit www.ohio.edu/mcclure/.