TAMPA — Two University of Tampa students and one UT alumna were part of a winning team at the recent Tampa Bay Technology Forum (TBTF) Exploratory Labs boot camp.
The winning team — Facili 2.0 — presented ideas about using smart trash cans for optimizing facility management. UT students that were part of the winning team included undergraduates Grant Heelan ’17 and Ekaterina Meshcheryakova ’18, and alumna Brittney Watson.
The boot camp prepares students for various business and technology jobs, and with the help of community mentors, teaches them about the role of technology, how to create business plans, how to market an idea and how to work in diverse teams.
The participating students, of which 10 were UT students, presented their business plans to a panel of judges. The teams were a mix of students from UT, the University of South Florida, St. Leo University and St. Petersburg College.
According to TBTF organizers, approximately 84 percent of students who have participated in previous boot camps have gone on to land jobs or internships in the tech industry.
Miloslava Plachkinova, UT assistant professor of cybersecurity, is a strong advocate of the Exploratory Labs boot camp program and said the boot camp allows students to bridge the gap between theory and practice.
“The employers who attended the boot camp spoke very highly of all the UT students,” Plachkinova said. “They were very pleased with the quality of UT’s educational programs.”
TBTF is a member-driven catalyst for the growth of the local technology sector helping to promote corporate expansion, entrepreneurship and development of a skilled tech talent pool. For more information, visit www.tbtf.org.
The University of Tampa is a private, residential university located on 110 acres on the riverfront in downtown Tampa. Known for academic excellence, personal attention and real-world experience in its undergraduate and graduate programs, the University serves 8,310 students from 50 states and 140 countries. Approximately 65 percent of full-time students live on campus, and more than half of UT students are from Florida.