The Center for Women and Information Technology (CWIT) held its First Annual Bits & Bytes I.T. Design Competition for high school juniors over Presidents' Day Weekend, 2006. Twenty academically talented young women were invited to an overnight visit at UMBC and were hosted by the CWIT Scholars in CWIT's living-learning community. The program took place during National Engineers Week, which kicks off each year with the College of Engineering and Information Technology's Open House.

This year's design competition used the Alice 3D authoring environment, which allows students to create, animate, and interact with 3D, computer-generated scenes. Students worked in teams to design an amusement park with various rides, games of skill, animated characters, and other features. Two teams were chosen for awards in technical and creative achievement.

Students came from high schools across Maryland and Virginia and enjoyed getting to know each other during the program through teambuilding activities and the team design competition. They also had the chance to meet with representatives from the different I.T. and engineering departments at UMBC. On Monday afternoon, students had the opportunity to tour the Imaging Research Center (IRC), which may be best known for its Virtual Tour of the Cone Sisters' Apartment and most recently for Euphoria, a feature film about the pursuit of happiness. Following the IRC tour, students attended an afternoon class of their choice to get a feel for the college classroom and toured the campus.