Computer science students win first and fourth place at programming competition

Two teams of computer science students from North Central College continued their tradition of excellence at the 2014 Associated Colleges of the Chicagoland Area (ACCA) computer programming competition held Feb. 22 at Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais.

The North Central College team of computer science major Chase Smith ’15 and physics major Bryan Cardwell ’14 took first place in the novice division of the competition. A second team consisting of computer science majors Michael Holler ’14, Justin Scherer ’14, Ken McMahon ’14 and Ian Braun ’16 placed fourth at the advanced level of the competition.

The competition includes two divisions: a novice division for students with one year of programming or less and an advanced division for all other students.

The event featured 19 different computer programming teams, 11 at the advanced and eight at the novice levels, from eight different colleges. Using one computer and no faculty instruction, each team was required to program solutions to eight different problems in four hours. Judges confirmed correct and incorrect answers and provided feedback. Teams could answer numerous times but were penalized for wrong answers.
 
Accompanying the students to the event was team coach Godfrey Muganda, professor of computer science.

Computer science is among 55 undergraduate majors offered at North Central College. Degrees include bachelor of arts in computer science, bachelor of science in computer science, an integrated bachelor’s/master’s degree and a master of science in Web and Internet Applications. North Central College graduates enter the workforce as programmers, database designers, network administrators, Web developers and other careers.