For three years in a row, Highland Park High School has been ranked by Newsweek as one of the
top 20 public schools
in the nation. This year the high school claims additional honors. Nine students from Ms. McGurgan's class were winners
in Part 1 of the IBM Master the Mainframe 2007 contest and Sushen Patel was the overall winner and the only high school
student in the top five. 1,750 students in U.S. and Canada participated in the contest, most of them college students, so
this is truly something to brag about!
Mainframes provide a "new" perspective
At Highland Park, the technology courses are elective
but students must take at least one before graduating. They can choose among Computer Applications, Digital Graphics,
Video Technology , Web Mastering, along with Ms. McGurgan's AP Computer Science courses. Mainframe computing
was not really part of their curriculum. Ms. McGurgan, with a BBA and a major in Computer Information Systems,
was a COBOL programmer for 2 years before deciding to teach. She found out about the contest through a listserv group
for AP Computer Science and thought it would bring a new perspective to her students.
Off and running
Ms. McGurgan said, "The students were excited about the contest; they are very competitive and always ready for a challenge.
Since they really had no experience with mainframe programming, they had no idea what the contest
would require." It turns out that their biggest hurdle was learning new terminology.
After ensuring that the school network would
allow access to download and install the emulator program, the entire class began the contest together on October 1
in the computer lab. After that, they were on their own. Sushen completed Parts 1 and 2 completely
on his own at home, winning a debit card for Part 2. By the end of Christmas break, he told his teacher that he had finished
Part 3 but didn't think he won.
 In January, Paul Newton and Tim Raley from IBM
asked to come to Ms. McGurgan's class as guest speakers. They hosted an impromptu conference call with the IBM mainframe
team in Poughkeepsie, NY and surprised everyone with the announcement that Sushen Patel was the overall winner. A roar went
up in the classroom. For first place, Sushen received a Nintendo Wii system and a trip for him and his family to the IBM
mainframe lab in Poughkeepsie for further recognition.
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