Cerner Corporation Disapproved our Grant Proposal

BDPA Education and Technology Foundation (BETF) and BDPA Kansas City (president, William Wells) learned that our $25,000 grant proposal has been disapproved by the community affairs folks at Cerner Corporation.

The disapproval letter read:

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Thank you for thinking of Cerner Corporation as a sponsor for the Student Information Technology Education & Scholarship (SITES) Program. We think it’s a great program and applaud your work in the community.

With healthy communities at the foundation of our vision, Cerner believes in corporate citizenship. In keeping with our overall mission and entrepreneurial spirit, we focus our community investments on three important objectives: Health and Wellness focused on condition management; STEM Education; and economic development emphasizing life sciences.

In addition, Cerner primarily sponsors its internal philanthropic organization, the First Hand Foundation who provides direct medical funding for children when all other resources have been exhausted. Through this relationship we are limited in our ability to support other philanthropic organizations given our commitment to First Hand.

Your organization’s proposal is certainly valuable. However, because this request does not directly fit into Cerner’s core community philosophy, we are unable to participate at this time.

Please let me know if you have any questions. I wish you and your team the best of luck.

Liz Ginther
Community Relations
Cerner Corporation

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We will continue to work with BDPA Kansas City chapter to obtain funding for the upcoming SITES program!

Interview With BDPA Vice President Michael Wulf

BDPA Midwest Region vice president Michael Wulf shares the plans to re-establish the organization in Kansas City.

BDPA iRadio Show - August 13, 2013 (Chris Jackson, Dr. Mack Joyner, Pamela Sexton)

BDPA Education and Technology Foundation (BETF) is very proud to be the creator of the BDPA iRadio Show. You can listen to the archive version of the show using the widget shown in the right-hand sidebar of this blog. FREE download from the iTunes Store is also available for our listeners!

Find Additional Technology Podcasts with BDPA on BlogTalkRadio

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The guests on the August 13th show:

Dr. Mackale Joyner - software engineer, Texas Instruments - Mack Joyner is a software engineer for Texas Instruments. 17 years ago he was a high school senior trained by BDPA Kansas City chapter to compete in the National BDPA High School Computer Competition (HSCC) championship. He credits that BDPA experience with affirming his desire to pursue a career in software engineering. BDPA made a vital impact on his education endeavors as his participation in the national HSCC competition enhanced his college application to Rice University.

The door that the BDPA helped open at Rice subsequently led to other doors being opened, which enabled Mack to complete his PhD in Computer Science at Rice University. Dr. Joyner's research interests include developing compilation strategies for object-oriented languages in high-performance scientific computing. Dr. Joyner was simply a high schooler in Kansas City when BDPA met him. Now he is one of the top high performance computing experts in the world. Dr. Joyner is one of the reasons that BDPA exists! I hope that all BDPA members enjoy his story as much as we do. You can follow BDPA on Twitter -- @BDPA

Chris Jackson - chief of staff, Deloitte - Chris is the Chief of Staff for Deloitte Growth Enterprise Services. Chris is a frequently requested lecturer on global competitiveness, emerging technology and technology strategy. He has direct responsibility for driving the development and delivery of Deloitte's Growth Enterprise Services strategy, operating approach and identification of solution offerings for mid-market, high growth and privately held clients. As a leader in Deloitte Technology Strategy and Architecture practice, he is involved with of its Emerging Solution Cloud ERP efforts within Deloitte Innovation. His consulting expertise spans IT Strategy, Business Alignment and pre/post IT merger integration.

Chris was a presenter at the 2013 BDPA Technology Conference on the topic, 'ERP in the Cloud - What You Need To Know'. Participants in this workshop learned what company CIOs and CFOs need to consider when evaluating cloud-based ERP.

Chris' Twitter handle is @chris_jackson1

Pamela Sexton - conference director, National BDPA - Pamela agreed to be a recurring guest on the BDPA iRadio episode that airs on the 1st Tuesday of each month. She is pulling together the largest gathering of African American IT professionals in the nation on August 14-17, 2013 in Washington DC. There will be thousands of participants, hundreds of corporations, dozens of workshops, seminars, plenary sessions, a wonderful golf tournament, a 2-day career fair and so much more.

You can follow the BDPA Conference efforts on Twitter: @BDPA_Conference

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We hope you enjoy the insights and commentary on the show from each of these guests. Please take a moment to post a comment to let us know that you care!

Related articles

• VIDEO: Review of 2013 BDPA Technology Conference
• BDPA iRadio Show - January 14, 2014
• BDPA iRadio Show - March 25, 2014

1993 BDPA Conference Brochure

1993 BDPA Conference Brochure

View more documents from Wayne Hicks

Were you in attendance at the 1993 BDPA Conference hosted by our BDPA Kansas City chapter? If so, what do you remember about it?

HSCC Testimonial: Mackale Joyner (Kansas City)

BDPA members sometimes lose sight of why our organization exists. We get so tied up with meetings, procedures and such that we forget the human lives that are being touched by our volunteer efforts and charitable donations. Our blog tries to put human faces on our efforts.

Take Dr. Mackale Joyner as an example. He recently shared his memory of the BDPA high school computer competition program.

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The BDPA national computer competition was very exciting and the conference affirmed my desire to pursue a career in software engineering. I enjoyed learning a new language and spending months preparing for the competition. It was encouraging to see so many people at the competition with my background that shared similar interests. I would later learn that the BDPA national competition was a good experience for college, as I had to learn several new programming languages while in college in a short time span. I am greatly appreciative for all those involved in sending the Kansas City team to the national conference, especially our coaches who spent many hours helping us prepare for the competition.

The BDPA has made a vital impact in my education endeavors. After acceptance to Rice University, I had the opportunity to visit Rice during Owl weekend. Owl weekend is a weekend in April where all accepted high school seniors stay on campus to experience what college life is like at Rice. This is a good opportunity for seniors who have not decided on a college to experience what life might be like at a particular university. When I arrived at Rice, someone from the admission office greeted me. When I told her my name, she immediately identified me as the person who competed in a national computer programming competition. She was referring to the BDPA national competition that I competed in the summer after my junior year in high school. She went on to tell me that the competition really distinguished my application from others and was one of the main reasons why Rice accepted me. The door that the BDPA helped open at Rice subsequently led to other doors being opened, which enabled me to complete my PhD in Computer Science at Rice University.

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Dr. Joyner was a graduate student in the Department of Computer Science at Rice University. His research advisor was the late Ken Kennedy. In fact, global supercomputer leader Cray Inc. selected Mackale as the first recipient of Cray's HPC graduate fellowship fund award in honor of the late Ken Kennedy. Mackale's research interests include developing compilation strategies for object-oriented languages in high-performance scientific computing.

He was simply a high schooler in Kansas City when BDPA met him. Now he is one of the top high performance computing experts in the world. Dr. Joyner is one of the reasons that BDPA exists! I hope that all BDPA members are smiling at his story as much as I am...