By: Brittany Payette
From 7-10 p.m. in the McCasland ballroom in the McMahon Centennial Complex, the Association of Computing and
Technology Students (ACTS) hosted a game night.
The game night included online games such as Mario Kart, WII games, board games, pizza, drinks and more.
Sophomore Computer Science major Kaitlyn Kair joined the ACTS in September of last year.
“There was a lot of cool stuff going on,” Kair said. “I felt like I didn’t get out enough and I just wanted to be a part of it, so
I thought a leadership position in ACTS would’ve benefited me.”
Kair said the officers in the club are really good about sharing their responsibilities. She also said one of their primary goals
for the organization is to prepare students for the workforce.
“To network, to socialize, to be really involved in the campus, that’s just sort of, like, what we pride ourselves on,” Kair
said. “We do a lot of like, networking stuff … In the Spring, we’re planning on doing some Linkedin stuff, to get people
prepared.”
She said the organization participates in other events as well, such as Halloween events and the Organization Fair on
campus.
“It’s just really a mix-mash of things,” Kair said. “As long as it’s getting students talking to each other, getting us prepared
for our convention, or getting students ready for the workplace.”
She said the club members are hoping for a great year.
“It’s been really amazing with a lot of the people coming out to a lot of our events so far,” Kair said. “I’m just really
excited.”
Kair said students who are interested in joining the club should attend one of their meetings and get an application from one
of the officers or their faculty advisor.
Senior Instructor Harry W. Kimberling is the ACTS advisor. He said he became the club’s advisor in 2018 and that the club
used to be called Association of Information Technology Professionals (AITP). However, when that company was bought out,
their organization received a cease-and-desist letter from the new owners that said they could no longer use the AITP name.
“We had to start everything from scratch,” Kimberling said. “Which was a good thing cause, you know, if you start
everything from scratch, you can make it what you want.”
He said he wanted to become the advisor so he could interact with the students.
“I want to see these students do better than I ever did in college,” he said. “Have more fun, socialize, network. Not fall into
the trap of society where it is today where everybody’s staying in their own little bubble and not interacting. And, they need
their soft skills.”
Senior Information Technology and Cyber Security major Lance Wallace made and sold baked goods at the game night to
help fundraise for the ACTS. He baked peanut butter cookies, puppy chow and chocolate popcorn.
“They needed fundraising,” Wallace said. “I like to bake, so, I said I can bake some stuff and bring it in and they said
‘great, we’ll do that.’”
“It aligns with my major,” Wallace said. “They have regional and national competitions that they participate in and I
thought that would help my career … We have our regional competition coming up in October, so we will all be traveling to
Springfield, Missouri for that and then our national competition is in Shreveport, Louisiana in April, I believe.”
He said his goal is to get as many new members of the organization to go to the competitions as possible.
Senior Computer Science and Information Technology major Belinda Foley said she helped to build the organization from
the ground up after the original club did not survive COVID-19 and had to rebrand because of the cease and desist letter.
Foley said her and the other officers decided that they wanted the club to help prepare students for a career in Information
Technology and its related fields.
“We want to give them the tools, everything that they can learn in their college experience,” Foley said. “At the end, just
(be able to) say ‘okay, I’m ready to go into the workforce. I know how to interview for an IT job, I know how to talk the IT
language.”
Foley said the ACTS spent a lot of last year determining what did and did not work for helping the students learn skills
outside of the classroom.
“Learning outside of actual classes is hard,” she said. “You’re tired, you don’t want to do extra stuff if you don’t have to.
So, we do things like this once a month. So, we do something fun, to get everybody together.”
Foley said the ACTS has two meetings per month, every other Monday.
“In those meetings we do presentations,” she said. “We do one presentation where it’s like, particular to the competitions
that we go to and then one presentation is like a fun, informative presentation. So, like, last Monday, we did a presentation on
Ethical Hacking.”
She said she believes that it is important for students to enjoy themselves while gaining knowledge.
“We try to do informative and fun things,” Foley said. “I feel like that’s the most effective (way) because these people do
want to learn, and it’s hard to learn outside of a classroom environment, where you don’t know anybody and you feel
awkward.”
She said that the club goes to two competitions each year, one in the fall and one in the spring. The competitions take place
as a part of the U. S. Information Technology Collegiate Conference and there is a regional competition and a national
competition. There are team and individual competitions.
“Regional – it happens in fall and national happens in spring,” Foley said. “Regional is a smaller competition … The
regionals, there’s ten, I believe ten sets of competitions and they’re all related to IT.”
For more information about the ACTS organization, contact Kimberling at hkimberl@cameron.edu.