Westminster College Computer Science Majors Do Well in Contest

Two teams of Westminster College computer science majors competed recently at the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) and placed 19th and 29th in a field of over 110 teams.

"The ACM, the largest organization of computing professionals in the country, organizes a set of regional computing contests throughout the world every year," said Dr. John P. Bonomo, assistant professor of computer science at Westminster College. "We reside in the East Central Region, which consists of most of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Ontario. This year's contest was held simultaneously at four sites: Ashland University, where we went, the University of Cincinnati, Western Michigan University and Sheridan University in Ontario."

"Each team consists of three students, and a school can send as many as two teams. The teams are given a set of eight problems, and try to solve as many of them as they can in five hours. When the students think they have solved a problem, they submit their program to the judges, who test it, and tell the team if it worked," continued Bonomo. "If it didn't work, the judges don't tell the team what was wrong&that's for them to figure out. Scoring is based on the time it took the team to get the correct answers, but they get penalty points for each incorrect submission."

Westminster's top team consisted of junior Kevin Campbell from Murrysville, senior Simon Kanaan from New Castle, and junior Bryan Mackrell from Valencia, and the other team was senior Mike Morris from Washington, senior Chuck Nogee from Pulaski, and senior Nate Sizemore from Dunmore, W. Va.

For more information, contact Bonomo at (724) 946-7287 or e-mail bonomojp@westminster.edu.

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