Record Participants for Student-led Tech Weekend

By Oriana Helfrecht-Kannady

Culverhouse students hosted the largest Association for Information Systems (AIS) Student Chapter Conference on March 27-29 with 29 different universities and executives in attendance, including HCA Healthcare CIO Chad Wasserman and Josh Jones, CEO of QuantHub, who both delivered keynote speeches. The conference, “brings together top students from leading IS programs to share innovations, network with industry leaders, and experience Tuscaloosa—advancing AIS’s mission to promote excellence in the study and practice of information systems worldwide.”

Both the AIS Student Chapter Leadership Conference and its accompanying UA Innovate hackathon challenge are the result of student leaders working tirelessly for the last 18 months on organizational logistics, an effort that included raising nearly $100,000 to host the conference.

“Overall, these events did a great job showcasing our program to the faculty from other institutions and the AIS leadership in attendance,” said Director of MIS Capstone Projects Jeff Lucas. “I felt we were able to showcase how strong our students are, how deeply we’re connected with the industry, and what’s possible when you hand the reins to talented, motivated students and give them a permission structure to make the events their own.”

Following the conclusion of the AIS Conference, UA students competed in the 24-hour UA Innovate Hackathon & Innovation Challenge, run by the Woman in Tech student organization. This year it broke the record for student participants at 174. Teams competed for a first-place prize of $1,000 and a second-place prize of $500 across six industry challenge areas: prototype innovation, cybersecurity, full stack development, social innovation, fintech, and data analytics.

The winners of the prototype challenge— Bailey Liddle (MIS), Ellie Burton (CS), Helene Renninger (MIS), and Khusi Modi (CS)—worked together over the course of 24 hours to develop and code a solution to a real-world problem posed by sponsor HCA Healthcare. Their challenge: to ensure consistency in patient data across multiple records.

“We had to find workarounds for situations like a doctor writing ‘Beth’ instead of ‘Elizabeth,’ or recording a birthdate as 6/27 rather than 06/27,” Burton explained. “We had the files, but we had to clean the data and then build a user interface that could interact with and display that data clearly.”

The group divided tasks based on individual strengths, emphasizing the importance of thorough planning before jumping into the coding phase. The process wasn’t without its hurdles. When something in their code broke overnight, Burton shared how proper rest led to the breakthrough. “If I didn’t sleep, I don’t think I would’ve woken up and thought of a solution to the problem.”

Reflecting on the experience, Modi emphasized the importance of embracing imperfection and leaning on your team: “You don’t need a perfect process—you just need to be quick and dirty with it. Rely on your teammates, you’re working together.”