North Central College computer science students place second in field of 12 teams

A team of computer science students from North Central College continued their tradition of excellence at the 2016 Associated Colleges of the Chicagoland Area (ACCA) computer programming competition held Feb. 20 at Elmhurst College.

Competing in the advanced division, a North Central team consisting of computer science majors Cornelius Donley ’16, Landon Petzold ’17 and Chase Smith ’16 correctly solved six of the eight competition problems to take second place in a field of 12 teams. The first-place team from Lewis University also correctly solved six problems, but placed ahead of North Central on tie-breaker rules based on submission times.

The competition requires teams of up to four students to work together on a single computer to solve as many of eight problems as possible in four hours. Teams are rated by the number of problems solved correctly and by the amount of time taken to produce solutions. To be successful, team members must be able to think quickly, work well together and possess strong problem-solving and programming skills.

Accompanying students to the event were Godfrey Muganda, professor of computer science and team coach; Judy Walters, associate professor of computer science amerita; and Christopher Kardaras, adjunct professor of computer science.