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K-State Today

March 5, 2015

Programming competition draws strong field of competitors

Submitted by Mary Rankin

C.J. Dopheide, junior; Max Erdwien, senior; and Ryan Woodburn, senior, all in computer science, were the first-place team in the K-State Association for Computing Machinery's Spring Programming Contest Feb. 28 in Nichols Hall. Nearly 100 students from a variety of majors spent five hours solving programming problems with the chance to win a share of more than $3,000 in prizes.

Each semester the K-State association hosts a local programming contest to encourage students to sharpen their programming skills while competing against their peers. In the fall semester, the winning teams at K-State have the chance to go on to compete in the International Collegiate Programming Contest North Central North America regional. Top teams at that event are invited to attend the International Collegiate Programming Contest World Finals.

Members of this year's winning team each took home a 50-inch flat screen television as their first-place prize for solving five of the 10 problems posted. In addition, members of the top four teams are offered a scholarship worth nearly $20,000 from the computing and information sciences department in the College of Engineering if they choose to pursue a doctorate degree in the program at K-State.

The event was sponsored by Koch Industries, ConocoPhillips, Garmin and Tradebot. Representatives from the industry sponsors served as judges for the event and took time to meet with students during breaks from the competition. Dan Andresen, associate professor, and Russell Feldhausen, instructor, both computing and information sciences, are faculty co-advisers for the contest.