MONTGOMERY, Ala., and REDMOND, Wash. — Nov. 20, 2012 — The Alabama Department of Education and Microsoft Corp. today formally announced the official launch of the Alabama Microsoft IT Academy Program. This new initiative is focused on further developing the overall technology skills of students.

Alabama’s Microsoft IT Academy will provide opportunities for students to earn certifications in Microsoft product areas, such as Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint. This program will be available all high schools statewide and will provide students with the valuable 21st century technical skills they need to be successful in both college and their future careers.

Gov. Robert Bentley said, “Offering industry certification to Alabama’s students will help ensure growth in our workforce. Adding qualified individuals to local businesses will improve economic success.”

The Microsoft IT Academy Program will provide participating local school systems with access to Web-based instruction, software lab licenses, e-learning and official course materials. Course topics will range from computer basics to high-level programming and database management. Students will get hands-on experience with the latest Microsoft software and e-learning resources. This program will also allow students to earn professional-level workplace credentials and technology skills before they graduate from high school.

“Through this program, we can assure business and industry of a skill set in the area of technology and ensure students entering college are equipped with the technical skills to succeed academically,” State Superintendent of Education Tommy Bice said.

Pilot Year for This Initiative

Currently, one school in each school system throughout the state has been selected is participating in this program. Starting in the 2013–2014 school year, the Microsoft IT Academy Program will be expanded to additional schools.

“The Microsoft IT Academy Program makes education more relevant to students so they can move from learning to earning,” said Cameron Evans, chief technology officer for U.S. Education, Microsoft. “Alabama schools, teachers and students are now at an advantage in keeping pace with changing technology and curriculum demands. The program also gives students equal access to the IT skills and certification they need to both prepare for advanced studies and to improve career opportunities with higher earning potential.”

IT certifications are increasingly being recognized as valuable credentials nationwide. Many institutions in Alabama are requiring freshmen students to pass a computer proficiency exam. This initiative is important because it will help Alabama’s students be better prepared for their futures.

The Microsoft IT Academy Program works to bridge the gap between education and the real world of work by helping to equip students with the technology-based skills they’ll need for successful careers in today’s highly competitive job market.

Benefits of Program

Students will have access to official course materials that can help them prepare to acquire industry-recognized Microsoft Office Specialist, Microsoft Technology Associate or Microsoft Certified Professional certifications. The program also focuses on helping students become both college- and career-ready.

Benefits to Schools Participating in the Microsoft IT Academy

Microsoft IT Academy provides schools and educators the necessary training and resources they need to offer students instruction on the latest IT and business applications. Benefits include access to many programs, such as the following:

• IT Academy members’ websites.

• E-learning curriculum — with more than 1,500 online multimedia courses to choose from, including games, simulations and videos — to provide students with a hands-on learning experience.

• Microsoft Digital Literacy curriculum for students who are new to computing skills.

• Microsoft E-Reference Library, a searchable library of more than 600 Microsoft Press books. Each school will receive five subscriptions.

• Access to Microsoft DreamSpark, a program providing students and teachers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines with access to Microsoft software developer tools and platforms under the DreamSpark license designed for academic institutions.

Alabama is the seventh state in the U.S. to participate in this innovative program.

Those interested in learning more about Alabama’s new Microsoft IT Academy Program should contact Alabama State Department of Education Career and Technical Education Administrator Dawn Morrison at (334) 242-9109 or dmorrison@alsde.edu.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://www.microsoft.com/news. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/news/contactpr.mspx.

REDMOND, Wash. — Nov. 20, 2012 — Dr. Jeannette Wing will join Microsoft Research as vice president, head of Microsoft Research International, reporting to Chief Research Officer Rick Rashid. Wing is a leading figure in computer science research, particularly in formal methods, security and privacy. She has held key positions in both academia and government, most recently at Carnegie Mellon University and the National Science Foundation (NSF).

“Jeannette is a leading light in the computer science research community, providing strong leadership both at Carnegie Mellon and at NSF,” Rashid said. “I have long been impressed by both her profound commitment to world-class research and her service to the research community, and I look forward to working alongside her. It’s a privilege to welcome Jeannette to Microsoft Research.”

From 2007 to 2010, Wing served as assistant director of the Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate at the NSF, where she led the directorate that funds academic computer science research in the United States. In this capacity, she worked with NSF staff to set funding priorities for the academic science and engineering research community, create new programs, and represent the nation’s computer science community. Wing has served twice as head of the Department of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University: before her term at NSF and again upon her return to Carnegie Mellon. She was also associate dean for Academic Affairs at Carnegie Mellon for five years, overseeing the educational programs offered by the School of Computer Science.

Jeannette Wing Vice President, Head of Microsoft Research International

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Wing received her bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her areas of expertise are in the foundations of trustworthy computing, software specification and verification, concurrent and distributed systems, and programming languages and methodology. Her research contributions include the first formal specification language for CLU; programming language support for atomic objects in distributed transactions; with Dr. Maurice Herlihy, the notion of linearizability, a correctness condition for concurrent objects; and with Dr. Barbara Liskov, a semantics for behavioral subtyping. Her contributions in security and privacy include work on attack graphs and attack surfaces, work on formalizing privacy policies for automated compliance checking, and work on trust in networks of humans and computers.

Within the computer science community, Wing is well-known for her advocacy of “computational thinking,” an approach to problem solving, designing systems and understanding human behavior that draws upon concepts fundamental to computer science. She sees it as a “universally applicable attitude and skill set that everyone, not just computer scientists, should be eager to learn and use.” Wing has also served as the founder and director of the Center for Computational Thinking at Carnegie Mellon.

Wing is a board member of the Computing Research Association, Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing Academic Advisory Board and General Electric’s Academic Software Advisory Panel. She is vice chair of the DARPA Information Science and Technology (ISAT) Board. She has been a member of many other advisory boards, including the Federal Networking and Information Technology Research and Development technical advisory group to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, the National Academy of Science’s Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, ISAT, and NSF’s CISE Advisory Committee. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association for Computing Machinery, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers.

Wing will be joining Microsoft Research in January 2013, assuming responsibility for Microsoft Research’s research laboratories in Bangalore, India; Cambridge, England; and Beijing.

“I’m excited to join Microsoft Research, a world-class research organization in computing and related disciplines, and I appreciate this unique opportunity to lead its international labs,” Wing said. “Microsoft Research has already had tremendous impact on the field of computing, on Microsoft’s products and services, and on society, with potential yet to be unleashed. I am looking forward to working with the extraordinary talent at Microsoft Research, and I am especially honored to serve the international labs, each with its own character, strengths and distinct cultures.”

About Microsoft Research

Founded in 1991, Microsoft Research is dedicated to conducting both basic and applied research in computer science and software engineering. Over 850 Ph.D. researchers focus on more than 55 areas of computing and openly collaborate with leading academic, government, and industry researchers to advance the state of the art of computing, help fuel the long-term growth of Microsoft and its products, and solve some of the world’s toughest problems through technological innovation. Microsoft Research has expanded over the years to seven countries worldwide and brings together the best minds in computer science to advance a research agenda based on an array of unique talents and interests. Microsoft Research operates in Redmond, Wash.; Cambridge, Mass.; New York City; Mountain View, Calif.; Cambridge, U.K.; Beijing; and Bangalore, India; and conducts research at the Advanced Technology Labs Cairo; Advanced Technology Labs Europe in Aachen, Germany; Advanced Technology Labs Israel; FUSE Labs in Redmond and Cambridge, U.K.; the eXtreme Computing Group in Redmond; and Station Q in Santa Barbara, Calif. More information can be found at http://research.microsoft.com.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://www.microsoft.com/news. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/news/contactpr.mspx.