SAIT has made Microsoft Office Specialist certification an integral part of their curriculum and it has paid off, with three of their students representing Canada at the Worldwide Competition in the past two years. Mary Head and Chelsea Proctor participated in the Competition in 2011, with Mary earning a silver medal in the Microsoft Excel 2010 category! She succeeded the previous year’s Word 2007 winner, Emily Daubert, another graduate of SAIT’s Administrative Information Management program.

The evening’s festivities included a beach ball competition with participants getting the chance to wear actual Worldwide Competition medals and mingle with previous winners. Attendees also were wowed by custom-made cakes by Jamie Whittaker, an instructor in the AIM program at SAIT. Along with amazing décor, costumes and props, videos of previous Worldwide Competitions were shown which is where the real motivation for students came in. “For them to see the excitement that surrounds the Competition every year was amazing and it got everyone really pumped up,” explained instructor Janine Violini.

“This event was a huge success for us and we had an amazing number of students show up. We had wonderful feedback from our students who made a point of telling us how much they enjoyed the evening,” said Whittaker. “A ton of students posted pictures of the event on their Facebook and Twitter pages and continued to wear some of their beach-themed gear the rest of the week. It certainly got them excited for our certification season!”