OREANDA-NEWS. CA Technologies (NASDAQ:CA) has announced new science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) initiatives taking place in the company’s Technology Centre in Prague, coinciding with the Centre’s 10th anniversary.

These initiatives are geared to addressing the STEM skills gap, transforming the lives of young people and encouraging the development of future leaders in IT. They include inviting students to CA Technologies campus to participate in Europe Code Week and continued support for the Czech Technical University’s mainframe curricula.

“The initiatives taking place in our Prague Technology Centre are specifically designed to address the STEM skills gap and nurture the next generation of IT leaders. They also reflect just how far CA Technologies footprint in Prague has grown and matured over the last ten years,” says Milan Svatek, vice president, Software Engineering, CA Technologies. “Collaboration between business and education providers is an ideal way to attract young people to learn STEM subjects, and CA’s participation in European Code Week and our long term investment in mainframe education at the Czech Technical University are testimony to that collaboration.” 

STEM education is a centrepiece of CA’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) programme. The company has recently launched Create Tomorrow, a program which aims at helping to address the skills gap and champion the creation of digital jobs in Europe.

Participation in the Europe Code Week

Europe Code Week offers coding activities across the region during the week of 12-16 October. This is CA’s second year participating in the grassroots initiative, aimed at bringing coding and digital literacy to everybody in a fun and engaging way. 

A group of students aged 16-19 from the Gymn?zium Jana Keplera school in Prague will join CA Technologies developers for one week (12-16 October) to work on a Cloud technology project. Specifically, they will be tasked with producing a prototype application to visualise the components of a virtual private cloud.

While CA Technologies will provide the workspace, technical equipment and support, the students will be responsible for research, design, implementation and final results. The exercise will give them practical, hands-on experience of working on a project using an Agile development methodology for a top-flight software company. The students will also research and apply concepts, logical approaches and techniques to solve a specific and complex problem related to Cloud computing.

Supporting Mainframe Education at the Czech Technical Universit

In parallel, CA Technologies is also supporting its STEM program through the renewal of its mainframe education agreement with the Czech Technical University. CA is continuing its involvement in the computer science curriculum within the Faculty of Nuclear Sciences and Physical Engineering, specifically lectures oriented to mainframe technologies, rarely taught in other universities. For example, lecturing students on the basics of the mainframe z/OS architecture, ISPF and JCL, and introducing them to mainframe programming.

Besides stimulating, motivating and encouraging the next generation of mainframe specialists, this STEM programme is also intended to lead to career opportunities for the students. Indeed, CA Technologies has previously hired several Czech Technical University course graduates.

10th Anniversary of CA Prague Technology CentreThese initiatives coincide with the tenth anniversary celebration at CA Technologies Prague Technology Centre. Originally established in 2005 as the Company’s European Mainframe Centre of Excellence, it has since grown to become the largest CA development presence in Europe and the second largest office of the Company in EMEA. CA has created a world-class development facility for next-generation software solutions, designed to help customers win in the application economy. Its Prague workforce includes more than 400 staff, representing more than 30 nationalities, 300 of which are developers working across the company’s distributed and mainframe solutions portfolio. Staff also supports CA Technologies regional Finance, Services, Inside Sales and Presales services.