Computer Science and Technologies Department
2008 MC Computer
Programming Competition was held on
April 11th, 2008
Sponsored by Make It Happen
Innovation Grant
Latest
News, Winners, and Photos
On Friday April
11, 2008, over 50 high school students competed in the annual High School
Programming Competition at the MC Rockville Campus. Sponsored by a Make It
Happen Grant and the Computer Science and Technologies Department, the contest
brought talented students from 10 Montgomery County high schools (Montgomery
Blair, Clarksburg, Paint Branch, Springbrook, Sherwood, Northwest,
Gaithersburg, Richard Montgomery, Poolesville, and Damascus) to participate in
a programming competition. Each team consisted of two-three students, with
teams being placed in either the Beginning/Intermediate Level or
Advanced/Intermediate Level, depending on what courses they had taken in their
respective high schools. Each team had to demonstrate its programming skills
and problem-solving abilities by attempting to solve a number of Java
programming problems. A total of twenty teams competed, with six teams and
seventeen students winning prizes.
The major goals
of the competition were to provide contact between the Computer Science and
Technologies Department and the students and teachers of local area high
schools, and to involve MC students in an extramural activity requiring them to
demonstrate critical thinking. The high school students were able to
demonstrate to MC their skills at programming and Montgomery College was able
to promote further study here. In addition, the competition allowed MC to
start building long term positive relationship with the teachers of future MC
students. College Students and Faculty benefited from the experience of
organizing the programming competition, including the design of problems,
solution to the problems, and testing the programs. College students
benefited from the experience of being judges, creating and testing competition
problems.
Refreshments,
including pizza and soft drinks, started the four-hour competition at 3 pm.
After welcoming remarks and ground rules of the competition, teams competed in
the computer laboratories in Humanities Building. Prizes included
trophies, medals, USB memory sticks and computer programming books provided by
the sponsors that included the Rockville campus book store and the following
publishers: Pearson/Prentice Hall, Deitel, Thomson/Course Technology, Wiley,
McGraw-Hill, and Murach, O’Reilly, John Wiley & Sons, Jones & Bartlett
Publishing, Course Technologies and Apress.
The competition
was proclaimed a major success by both attending high school students and
teachers and those organizing the event. All teachers during the competition
indicating that they would like to participate in a similar event next year,
which the department is ready to do it. The MC students who participated were
very excited and found it to be a great experience.
The organizers
of the competition from the Computer Science and Technologies Department were,
Project Directors of the Make It Happen Grant, Grigoriy Grinberg and Alla Webb,
Department Chair, Professor Jeannette Wisniewski, and Administrative Aide, Ms.
Mary K. O'Banner. All members of the department including professors Andy
Yao, Janet Joy, Ida Justh, and Ray McDowall were involved and participated in
different committees to prepare for the competition. Over thirty students
from the Computer Science and Computer Application departments participated
either as judges or as assistants. The competition computer/networking
requirements were provided by the OIT personal Doug Kitchener, Hussein Elfadl,
Guillermo Vega and Michael Botelho. Computer Science Department at UMUC was
invited to attend and participate in judging the competition. As a result two
UMUC professors, Nicholas Duchon and Duane Jarc actively helped to judge the
competition. S K Bhaskar, the Dean of CS Department, and Jimmy Robertson,
Director CMIS/CMSC, coordinated and helped by sending the above mentioned
professors. Thirty CS and CA students participated in competition as judges and
volunteers. Over ten MC CS department students (Mark Klieger, Donald Cook,
Joanne Mbakop, Ben Green, and others) were selected to create scenarios/problems
to be solved in the competition. The MC college students benefited from the
experience of designing questions and programs for the competition. MC students
and CS department faculty members designed over 100 questions and programs for
the competition. College photographer Don Rejonis was present during the whole
competition to take photos.
The Programming
Competition held on April the 12, 2008 was a great success that built on the
foundation of augural competition held last year. We are planning to hold
another competition last year with an aim to increase the number of schools and
students participating with the goal being to further advertise Montgomery
College and the Computer Science and Information Technologies department to the
wider general community.
Winners:
Advanced/Intermediate
Level
First Place:
Stephen Hurley, Kevin Chung, Martin Petrov, Richard Montgomery High School
Second Place:
Wesley Ripley, Dave Sweigart, Davis Matt, Springbrook High School
Third Place:
Justin Kenel, Shawn Na, Naseem Zietoon, Clarksburg High School
Beginning/Intermediate
Level
First Place:
David Shiao, Michael Zhang, Richard Montgomery High School
Second Place:
Michael Mekonnen, Gary Weiser, Charles Yorklush, Paint Branch High School
Third Place: Matt
McKay, Rebecca Krosnick, Ishan Khetarpal, Poolesville High School
Competition
information
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Reviewed April 20, 2008 
Grigoriy Grinberg