Matt Burr, who graduates this year from Cambrian College's Computer Systems Technology program, captured the gold medal at the 15th annual Canadian Skills Competition in Charlottetown, PEI, which was held May 20 - 22, 2009. To qualify for the national level competition, Burr won a gold medal at the Ontario Skills Competition, held in Waterloo May 4 and 5, 2009. As well, Dave Smart, a student in Cambrian's Heavy Equipment Technician program, won fourth in his category at the Canadian Skills Competition, and earned a gold medal at the provincial competition.

The Canadian Skills Competition is an Olympic-style, two-day event for youth to showcase their trade and technology skills and to compete against the best in the nation. All competitors at this national level event have won medals at provincial and territorial competitions.

“At the national event, Matt was tested on Windows Server installation, management, domain services, user and email management, Linux client and server administration, and Linux and Windows scripting, among other things,” said Bob Vachon, coordinator of the Computer Systems Technology program at Cambrian College. “Cambrian can be very proud of graduating students like Matt who proved that he is among the best in the country in his chosen discipline.”

To qualify for the Skills Canada competition, Burr won over nine other competitors at the provincial computer networking competition. “Matt's provincial gold medal is the fourth consecutive provincial gold medal won by four different Cambrian students,” said Vachon. “I think the fact that we have produced four separate provincial gold medal winners speaks highly of our Computer Systems Technology program here at Cambrian.”