Computer Science Students in IPC Competition

Four Marshall University Computer Science Majors competed in the Southeastern USA Regional Section of the International Collegiate Programming Competition (ICPC). The students competed at Radford University in Radford, VA, on November 13, 2004. This  competition was sponsored by Association of Computing Machinery - a professional society for computer scientists. Funding for the event was provided by IBM. Winners of each region will compete in the International Finals to be held in Shanghai, China, on April 3-5.

Each team in the regional competition was assigned a Unix work station and a set of eight problems to solve in a five hour time period. The team that solved the most problems within the allotted time was declared the winner. In the event of a tie, the team that solved the most problems in the least amount of time would have been declared the winner.

This is the first time Marshall has participated in the ICPC since the Computer Science major was reinstituted by CITE in the fall of 2004. While competing institutions were able to send teams of students of any academic standing, the Marshall team included only students enrolled in the freshman level course Computer Science I. As the computer Science Program matures at MU, more teams and students at more advanced levels will be competing.

The students representing Marshall University this year were Zachary Howard, Tue Ly, Sean Martin, and Phillip McCabe.

The Marshall team placed 51st out of 161 teams at the competition. The all-freshman team solved two of the eight problems assigned, for an overall score of 423, while the Competition's winning team from John's Hopkins University solved only five out of eight for a score of 870 points. The competition included 483 participants from 73 schools across the region. Visit the ACM Programming Contest (Mid-Atlantic Region) Web site for more competition information.