PIKE interns awarded bursaries at 10th anniversary event

Twelve student recruits of the Mona Information Technology Services’ (MITS) internship programme and graduates of its training and development seminar, Past Intern Knowledge Empowerment (PIKE), were recognised with bursaries and awards recently.

They were presented at the 2024 training seminar in the categories of Most Improved student worker, Most Productive student worker, Service Excellence, Technical Competence and best Train-the-Trainer student leader.

Complementary to these categories was the Eagle Award for academic excellence and work productivity balance.

The group was hosted on Wednesday, July 17 during PIKE’s 10th anniversary staging of the event, during which initiative owner Janice Brown announced the award of four bursaries valued at a total of $150,000 to the top Most Productive student workers who are part of the work team. An additional sum was presented to the top Service Excellence student worker.

The financial gifts were made possible through contributions from members of the Jamaica diaspora and former interns, who are also past staff members. They are Marlon Grant and Kadian Roberts-Martin, former interns Romell Hamilton and Krystal Bruce-Rosado, and Angella Scott, an office attendant employed in the MITS department.

With human capacity building as the hallmark of PIKE’s vision and mission, the theme ‘Building the Builders’ was selected for the 2024 seminar.

Training facilitators for the seminar were Paul Morris, lecturer at the Shortwood Teachers’ College; Priscilla Spence-Wisdom, past MITS intern, currently compliance and internal audit manager at Columbus Communications Jamaica Limited (Flow); Nicolai Green, past MITS intern, now senior director, financial intelligence analyst at the Financial Investigations Division in the Ministry of Finance. Dr Janette Williams, director of marketing and communications and lecturer at the Shortwood Teachers’ College as well as Dr Tina Hylton-Kong, clinical director at The UWI Mona Health Centre completed the line-up of distinguished presenters.

PIKE is a training and development seminar that is affiliated with the Mona Information Technology Services, UWI, Mona. It is an annual professional development training seminar that is designed for interns who are recruited for MITS’ internship programme. This training also caters to other full-time frontline service delivery agents and client care representatives.

As part of staff development and human capacity-building component, student workers are engaged in performance evaluation, and knowledge- and competency-based quiz sessions. Their performance is also guided by set key performance indicators and the standard operating procedures that guide general service delivery and service quality, a release outlined.

At MITS, the student workers are involved in hands-on training to become skilled in sought-after and marketableinformation technology-related skills of various categories. Among the areas of exposure are digital and social media production, classroom technology management, software and hardware trouble-shooting skills, and IT problem resolution.