T-Shirt Voting

03/24/09

The t-shirt ideas are posted. Please vote for one of them by this Friday, March 27.

ACM Programming Contest

10/22/08

On Saturday, November 15th, UW-Eau Claire will be one of the sites for the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) International Programming Contest. This contest is held by regions – our region is North Central North America, which includes 8 states and 2 Canadian provinces. There will be 150-200 teams within our region competing in this contest. We already have two student teams signed up, but can use at least one more team of three students who is interested in competing that day. You have to be available from approximately 10:30 AM through 6:00 PM – there is an initial meeting and lunch, then the contest is for 5 hours (12:30 PM to 5:30 PM), and we’ll have pizza and awards afterwards. Teams have one computer to share, and try to solve as many problems out of about 10 as they can in 5 hours. Languages available for the contest will be Java and C++. Benefits include free pizza after the contest, possibly free lunch, prizes for the top teams, a free t-shirt, and a free student membership to the national ACM (the primary professional association for computer scientists.) The questions are generally data structures/algorithms level or higher, so having at least one team member with CS 245/CS 255 completed is preferable and will be given higher priority. However, first or second year students who are interested are still encouraged to participate if there is space (see below.)

If you are interested, get a team of three students together (no less than three) and contact me by email. The first qualified team to respond is guaranteed a place. The next two teams will be placed on a waiting list, and will be able to compete if we have space (this depends on how many teams from other schools come to our site – we may see teams from UW-Stout and possibly UW-Madison this year). Past that, I will put additional teams on a second waiting list, but chances of participating in this contest will be small given that our site can only support a limited number of teams. At any rate, registration closes on October 27th. So, if you are interested in participating, please get a team together quickly and contact me as soon as possible. If there is significant interest that we can’t support here, we may be able to organize a local contest for next semester.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact Professor Paul Wagner. Additional information is available at http://www.cs.unomaha.edu/acmregn/ .