Congratulations to Bellevue West High School graduate and entrepreneur Cory Becker for winning a national Cisco Networking Academy award. The award is the latest in a string of accolades for the 2007 graduate, who within the last year has launched his own company while attending his freshman year in college, yet he still has found time to give back to his community.

Cisco notified Becker in early June that he had won the Networking Academy 4R Results award, which is given to students or graduates who have shown the greatest advancement in their career, educational or personal development as a result of their Networking Academy training. Bellevue West technology teacher Stacie Bender nominated her former student in large part for his efforts to give back to the school's Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) club.

"He has made contacts to teach some of our FBLA members how to host web sites. He also has developed a plan to start up another company that would employ FBLA students, giving them experience and the ability to raise funds," Bender says. "That idea is still in its infancy but has incredible potential."

Becker took two years of Cisco Networking training at Bellevue West and another Cisco semester at Metropolitan Community College. The Cisco Networking Academy Program is a comprehensive e-learning program designed to provide students with the Internet technology skills essential to participate in a global economy. He designed his first website in 2002 for an Omaha photographer. He also became involved in FBLA, where he won several 1st-place awards in network design and in Java programming in FBLA competitions.

"The Cisco training was a piece of where I am today," Becker says. "It showed me I could really accomplish anything I wanted with computers."   

Shortly after graduating from high school, he founded Becker Web Solutions, LLC and has assembled a team that includes three designers, three developers, and a server-hosting partner in Virginia. Although his company is barely a year old, the young entrepreneur has already made a splash in the IT world, finding himself in the news for an innovative add-on to FreshBooks. In the meantime, Becker is also working toward a degree in Management Information Systems at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

As for his collaboration with Bellevue West, Becker says he is sometimes asked to produce websites for community organizations and sees mutual benefit in pairing students who need experience with nonprofits with limited budgets. He anticipates drawing on the considerable talent within the FBLA club to produce the graphic design for the nonprofit websites that his firm would produce. Becker says he and Bellevue West faculty will begin firming up plans for the collaboration in July, with hopes that the program will be in place this fall.   

The AIM Institute is a regional Cisco Networking Academy that works with high schools and colleges in eastern Nebraska and western Iowa to set up Networking Academies and provide curriculum training for teachers. For more information about establishing a Cisco Networking Academy in your school, click on Cisco Networking Academy Program or contact:

 
Dave Coover
Director of Training
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