Student Programmers Do Well at Regional Contest
A team of Alma College students participated in a regional computer
programming contest and finished 45th out of 116 teams representing 67
colleges and universities throughout Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan,
Ontario and Indiana.
“Our team is very bright, and I anticipated they would finish in the
top 50 percent,” said faculty advisor Myles McNally. “We look to do
well at these contests and get some good experience for our students.”
Port Huron sophomore Charles Cook, Davison sophomore David Burwell and
Fowler sophomore Mitchell Loudenbeck gave themselves a team name of
“The Best We Can Do.” Eighteen college teams from Michigan competed at
the regional competition, with Alma placing seventh out of the 18
Michigan teams.
The East Central Region competition on Nov. 10 was part of the 32nd
annual Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) International
Collegiate Programming Contest, sponsored by IBM. Regional champions
advance to the world finals next April in Banff Springs, Alberta,
Canada.
Teams of three students were challenged to use their programming
skills, creativity and business sense to solve complex, real world
problems under a grueling five-hour deadline. The team that solved the
most problems correctly in the least amount of time advanced to the
world finals.
“We solved two out of the eight questions, which we thought was pretty
good,” said Cook. “We went to gain programming experience. It was the
first time all of us participated in a programming contest at the
college level. The problems made you think outside of the box.”
About 25 of the teams at the regional could not solve at last one of
the problems, while two teams solved all eight problems. A team from
the University of Waterloo won the regional contest to advance to the
world finals.
Posted: Wed, November 14th, 2007 at 12:56AM
