We would like to announce that on December 18, 2021, the Rzeszow University of Technology, as the first Polish university, joined the Academic Mainframe Consortium e. V. (AMC) which brings together institutions and companies working in the area of mainframe computing. Its main goal is to help academic institutions which already conduct research and teaching activities in the field of mainframes and to bring this field back to other academic centers.
The organization is headquartered in the German town of Glattbach (Bavaria) and so far has concentrated its activities mainly in the area of German-speaking countries, the so-called DACH (Germany, Austria, Switzerland). Apart from the Rzeszów University of Technology, the existing members of the consortium include such universities as, among others, the University of Leipzig and Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main. The consortium is also supported by companies operating in the industry, such as Deutsche Bundesbank Eurosystem, PKS Software GmbH, BMC Software, and many others. As a university, we have the opportunity to use the mainframe resources made available by the association - to conduct scientific research and for teaching purposes, as well as to participate in many events and conferences available to members of the consortium, which are an opportunity to exchange experiences and establish new contacts in the field.
As the Rzeszow University of Technology, we are currently the only Polish university involved in teaching activities in the field of programming and mainframe operation. Courses in this field have been conducted at our University since 2005 in cooperation with IBM, over 360 students have completed them, and for most of the project duration, they were available to students (20 per year) free of charge, thanks to financing from our University as well as external grants from operational programs of the European Union. Marek Śnieżek, Ph.D., from the Department of Computer and Control Engineering at RUT’s Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and a member of the IBM Academic Initiative, was and is responsible for the education in this field, and his students achieved numerous successes in international competitions (including Master the Mainframe Contest), and find secure and well-paid employment as mainframe system administrators in institutions that own such units - mainly in banks, corporations and government agencies.
The agreement was signed by Prof. Jarosław Sęp, Vice-Rector for Development and Business Cooperation, and the person responsible for contact with the consortium and coordination of activities will be Paweł Kuraś, M.Sc. from the Department of Complex Systems at the Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the RUT.
Many thanks go to Dominik Strzałka, DSc, Ph.D., Eng., professor of the Department of Complex Systems at the Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the RUT, who initiated and coordinated talks with the AMC consortium, and to:
- Roman Zajdel, DSc, Ph.D., Eng. - dean of the RUT’s Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Maciej Szalacha, M.Sc. and Patrycja Rzeszutek, M.Sc. from the RUT’s Centre for Technology Transfer
for the coordination of activities on the part of our University.
Let's hope that this cooperation will bring many fruitful projects, which of course can be done with further hard work. The first activities in this area are already planned - and about the effects and progress, we will certainly inform in the coming months.
