Top high school students compete in computer science contest at Stetson University
Deland, FL (November 30, 2009) –
DeLand – More than 80 of Florida’s top high school computer science students tested their skills and competed against their peers at the Computer Science Programming Contest at Stetson University on Nov. 21.
Twenty-seven teams of three students each participated, representing 12 high schools from around the state. This was Stetson’s 13th year offering the competition.
The 2009 winners were: Ocoee High School, first place; Ransom Everglades School, second place; and Winter Springs High School, third. The top three teams won a top-end computer for their school.
In addition, every participating student received a T-shirt and prizes including Stetson scholarships ranging from $8,000 to $24,000. Students who participate in the contest for more than one year earn an additional $4,000 in scholarship money for every year they participate.
“The contest gives talented students an opportunity to practice their skills and also helps Stetson identify and attract top students for its Computer Science and Computer Information Systems programs,” said Dr. Hala ElAarag, associate professor of computer science and adviser for Stetson’s student chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery.
“Stetson can provide these students opportunities that large state university programs simply cannot, including hands-on, experiential learning in small classes and the chance to work closely with Ph.D. faculty who have industry experience,” ElAarag said. “Many of our students publish their student work professionally, which gives them a huge advantage when job-seeking or applying to graduate schools. For example, a recent contest winner and graduate published the work he did with me and presented it at the Annual Undergraduate Research Poster Session on Capitol Hill. He was offered a job at Google, where he is now a software engineer.”
High school participants in the contest have to be familiar with Java or C/C++ and know how to perform file input and output. Students are provided with several programming environments to choose from, such as Eclipse, BlueJ, JCreator or Microsoft Visual Studio.NET.
In the competition, students were provided with two practice problems for 30 minutes, followed by a break. Then they competed for three hours on a problem set that consisted of nine problems – three easy, three intermediate and three difficult.
The competition tests students’ problem-solving skills and their programming knowledge. The problem set covers topics such as solving miscellaneous math problems, sorting, searching, strings manipulation, grids, trees and graphs. The level of difficulty was established to ensure that at least one team would attempt every problem. Following lunch, Stetson students provided a demonstration of their work for the high school participants. The day concluded with an awards ceremony.
