11-11-03
BEHREND STUDENTS EXCEL
AT COMPUTER PROGRAMMING COMPETITION
A four-student team from Penn State Erie, The Behrend College, ranked fifteenth of 128 teams competing in the Association for Computing Machinery's International Collegiate Programming Contest. The teams came from seventy-one colleges and universities located in western Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, eastern Ontario, and Indiana, and they included competitors from colleges and universities such as Oberlin, Pitt, Ohio State, Denison, Baldwin-Wallace, Carnegie-Mellon, and Wooster.
"This is the first time we have attended the ACM contest, and we are very proud of our performance," said Dr. Meng Su, assistant professor of computer science. Su and Charles Burchard, instructor in computer science, coached the team. "The Behrend Lions team came in ahead of teams from Pitt, Notre Dame, Oberlin, Penn State University Park, and Case Western. I am especially grateful to Dr. Roger Knacke, director of the School of Science, who gave us encouragement and support to participate. "
"I congratulate our ACM team on doing so well in their very first competition," said Knacke. "The ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest is the most prestigious live programming contest in the world."
The Intercollegiate Programming Contest, sponsored by IBM, has two rounds: regional contests and the world final. Teams with the best results in the regional contests advance to the world final, which will be held in Prague in the Czech Republic in March and April next year. The contest is designed to showcase the best programmers in the world to representatives of large companies that are searching for talented programmers.
Representing Penn State Behrend in the contest were: Lee Steen, a computer science major from Erie; Jonathan Lobaugh, a computer engineering and computer science major from Erie; Andrew Sobotka, a computer engineering and computer science major from Sarver; and Joshua Walker, a computer science major from Russell.
Contact:
Loretta Brandon
814-898-6063 (O)
E-mail: lzb6@psu.edu