The spotlight is on Lúcio Gomes Peixoto Júnior.

Brazilian Students Learn the Business Drivers Behind IT Hiring

Students love learning from Lúcio Gomes Peixoto Júnior. Not only does he have a full time job helping companies to be successful through technology, he also teaches Oracle Academy database programming courses at three universities in Brazil: Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo, the Associação Educacional Dom Bosco and University of Barra Mansa, both in Rio de Janeiro.

Over the past 15 years, Peixoto has taught about 1,300 students and steered hundreds of them to become Oracle certified.

Professor Lúcio, as students call him, has the gift of getting students excited about databases and about the world of work, uniting them outside the formal classroom to question, experiment, and equip themselves for the job market.

“Most teachers are too academic, but Professor Lúcio gives us real-life examples from his work in the IT world,” says Carina Santos, who now works as a data analyst in a pharmaceutical company in Rio de Janeiro.

“You could call me the bridge between academia and the business world,” comments Peixoto.

Bridging Academia and Business with Oracle Academy Resources

Peixoto is engaged by the universities to teach Oracle Academy courses evenings, Saturdays and during school holidays. On weekdays, he works in São Paulo with a leading company in integrated technology services throughout Latin America. Currently he is focused on assisting clients with cloud solutions, digital payments, and infrastructure management.

In Brazil, universities and the Ministry of Education alike recognize the importance of educating students in computer science, and universities rely on Peixoto to deepen students’ knowledge of Oracle database, SQL programming and more. With the direction to maximize his use of Oracle Academy resources, he not only teaches courses covering database and Java, but also uses Oracle Press books and online software access to teach students in apps development, middleware, business intelligence, and other topics.

Daniel Nugas, a graduate of the University of Barra Mansa, learned both database and applications development from Peixoto’s extracurricular classes. Today he works as an ERP systems support engineer, implementing new modules for small- to medium-sized companies.

“I am applying everything I learned through Professor Lúcio, especially the customization of apps,” says Nugas. “His courses made me hungry to get out, get certified, and start working.”

This enthusiasm is echoed by Carina Santos: “I honestly can say that Professor Lúcio helped me to get the best out of Oracle Academy, the most wonderful program I ever encountered. Studying under a teacher working in industry made all the difference.”

Understanding Corporate Needs When Hiring

One of Peixoto’s innovative strategies in teaching the fundamentals of databases and programming is to emphasize the financial impact of skilled and knowledgeable IT talent on commercial enterprises.

“I tell them that companies are hiring people who know how to boost system performance and drastically reduce costs, because in today’s pay-as-you-go cloud world, cutting costs is priority,” he explains.

Students in his Oracle Academy course Database Design and Programming with SQL learn how to build and interact with a relational database (select, update, delete, insert). But they also come to understand through Peixoto’s examples how a wrongly built data model can slow system performance and affect a company’s bottom line. Peixoto instructs them on how to fix the problem by adjusting the model, creating indexes in the database and tuning the SQL to reduce resource consumption in the server, where the database and application codes are executed.

Data compression is another real-world example he likes to share, emphasizing the market opportunities for professionals skilled in managing Oracle database environments. “I show them how gains in database compression help companies realize their return on technology investment―and that includes justifying why they hired you!”

He highlights the importance of controlling costs through measurement, collecting data before and after compression in order to quantify a reduction in total database size or accelerated response time for mission critical apps. “Once students grasp this, they mature quickly into professionals proficient in managing computing environments, skills all companies are looking for,” Peixoto states.

He also urges students to sit for exams leading to Oracle Certification to become more competitive and qualified when seeking a job. His access to Oracle Academy resources through the universities, each one an Oracle Academy Institutional member, allows Peixoto to obtain discounted exam vouchers for his students.

Daniel Nugas, for example, attributes obtaining his current employment to having sat and passed the Oracle Certified Junior Associate (OJCA) exam. Carina Santos currently is studying for the same certification to advance her career.

The Goal: Jobs

Peixoto maintains contacts with the human resources managers of leading companies in both São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, which always are on the lookout for qualified staff who can get up and running fast. In any month, Brazilian job sites offer upwards of five hundred job openings for Oracle technologies.

“My number one objective is to help students get jobs,” Peixoto says. “Working with Oracle Academy makes a big difference, because Oracle is a world leader and committed to supporting higher education. My role is to add value to Brazilian universities by going beyond formal curricula, teaching students to have critical and innovative thinking.”

His students share his belief in the power of education. They interact through his social media channel and have created the hashtag #EducationToLiveAndGoFurther for posting photos, including those of Oracle Academy events, students in Oracle Academy t-shirts celebrating with their professor, tips on preparing for their Oracle Academy Junior Associate certifications, and the fun they have learning from Professor Peixoto.

Thank you, Mr Lúcio Gomes Peixoto Júnior for your passion for Oracle Academy and for preparing your students to make a positive impact on Brazil!