A team of college students coached by a Corning solutions architect recently won an information technology competition, defeating teams from larger North Carolina universities.

A Corning employees from the Solution Architecture Group in Information Technology in Hickory, mentored the four-man Corning-sponsored team from Wake Technical Community College in Raleigh to victory in the 2016 Student Architecture Showdown held by the International Association of Software Architects (IASA).

The team worked four to six hours a weekend from late July until the end of September, to create an IT architecture for a fictional store in order to make it easier for shoppers and improve employee efficiency. The team then presented their solution to a panel of three judges at the ITARC Southeast 2016 Conference in Raleigh, sponsored by the Raleigh IASA chapter.

The Wake Technical team topped competing teams from University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Duke University, North Carolina State University, and North Carolina Central University. After the competetion the four members of the winning team received opportunities for job interviews with Corning and other team sponsors.