August 25, 2005

by Joseph Rajendran, News@Cisco

A Nanyang Polytechnic graduate of the Cisco Networking Academy Program, Viridis Liew, beat 700 contestants across 42 countries to clinch the Gold award in the IT PC/ Network Support category. In the process, she also won the Albert Vidal award for the best overall achiever across the competition's 39 categories.

The silver and bronze winners of the same category were also Networking Academy Program graduates from Canada and Brazil respectively.

WorldSkills, formerly known as the "Skill Olympics", symbolizes the excellence in vocational skills. Every two years hundreds of young skilled people, accompanied by their teachers and trainers, gather from around the world to compete before the public in the skills of their various trades and test them against demanding international standards.

The students represent the best of their peers drawn from regional and national skill competitions held currently in 42 countries. Viridis was among the 11 people that represented Singapore in Finland and was the only female competitor in her category.

The Cisco Networking Academy Program is a comprehensive e-learning program which provides students with the Internet technology skills essential in a global economy. The Networking Academy program delivers Web-based content, online assessment, student performance tracking, hands-on-labs, instructor training and support, and preparation for industry standard certifications.

In Singapore, over 30 educational institutions, including institutes of higher learning, offer the Networking Academy Program. In a recent interview with Viridis and her mentor Kelvin Ng from the Nanyang Polytechnic, they discussed program factors which enabled Viridis to stand out.

The Cisco Networking Academy Program trains students heavily on practical problems, said Viridis. "We engage in many scenarios and it is very competitive. We are given many practical scenarios and we are expected to find the solutions quickly," she said of her experience.

And this ability to handle practical problems was apparent at the competition in Helsinki. In the run up to one of the tests, which was not part of the test, the computer's hard disk had failed and stalled the competition. "But Viridis quickly isolated the hard disk and figured out that the unit was formatted wrongly," said Kelvin.

During the trials, Viridis also stood out in her ability to configure Cisco equipment to the Linux kernel. "This recompiling really involves system management scripting, which is not commonly taught to students. The situation is extremely ambiguous and Viridis was able to get it right," said her mentor.

"This demonstrates the emphasis placed on the hands-on elements of the Networking Academy curriculum," continued Kelvin.

The level of management support from the Nanyang Polytechnic as well as a number of other partners, including Cisco, contributed to the students' success. Aside from the experience gained during the course of the Progam, Cisco gave Viridis a coveted opportunity to train for three weeks at its North Carolina facility, which boosted her knowledge and confidence in the run up to the Helsinki competition.

In addition, Singapore Computer Systems, a tier-one systems integrator in Singapore, enhanced the experience gained in the Networking Academy Program by taking Viridis under its arms. "During the two-month tenure, several senior people were at hand, coaching and reinforcing her networking skills," said Kelvin, adding that this was an invaluable hands-on contribution.

The Cisco Networking Academy program was launched in October 1998. Since its inception, over 1.6 million students have enrolled at more than 10,000 academies located in high schools, technical schools, colleges, universities and community-based organizations.

In Asia Pacific alone, there are over 1200 academies in 25 countries, teaching more than 96,000 students, and over 69,000 have graduated with an international passport to a well paid career.

Joseph Rajendran is a freelance journalist located in Singapore.