The CIT College of Computer Studies Team bagged the top prize and earned for themselves and the institution the title, Country's Champion, during the Sun Microsystem's Open Jive Challenge '09. The prestigious event was held at the Technological Institute of the Philippines, Quezon City on July 18, 2009.

IT students Israel Sato, Jomark Aldave and Joshua Verano, together with their coach, IT Department Chair Larmie Santos- Feliscuzo, composed the CIT Team, claiming the honor of being the first and sole Philippine representative as this is the first time the competition is held in the country. In addition, they won a $1000 cheque, three $320 Sun Microsystem certification vouchers, and four Samsung GTS 2335 smartphones.

Their submission entitled, 'Generic Spellchecker: An Open Office Extension' impressed the judges because of its practicability and usability.

CIT bested 14 finalist teams from other top-caliber universities in the country, such as the Manila Central University, Silliman University, Technological Institute of the Philippines- Manila, University of Immaculate Concepcion, University of the Philippines- Diliman and University of San Jose- Recoletos.

They are slotted to represent the Philippines in the Asian Grand Finals in Singapore on July 27-29, 2009.

Open Jive, organized by Sun Microsystems, and partnered regionally by Elixir Technology and locally by the Philippine Society of I.T. Educators (PSITE), is the one of the Asian region's most prestigious competition of open source software development. The winning team of the regional grand championship in Singapore will be awarded US$3000, four Macbook Pro laptops and a free trip to the next Sun Developer event held in the region. This year marks the Philippines' and Indonesia's entry to the competition, joining Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore who have had this competition for several years.

The objective of Open Jive Challenge is to use Open Source technologies such as Java™technology, Open Solaris™ NetBeans™IDE, MySQL™and many others to develop Web 2.0 solutions which consequently hope to address global key issues while fostering interaction between communities on the Internet.

The CIT College of Computer Studies is one of the only nine institutions in the Philippines awarded by the Commission of Higher Education (CHED) as a Center of Excellence in IT Education.

(from www.cit.edu)