DWC Computer Science
Teams Places Fourth
at Rochester Institute of Technology Conference
40 Colleges Participate in Programming Contest
(Nashua, NH) — Watch
out, “big name” computer science schools and make room for Daniel Webster
College!
In a programming
competition held at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), NY, last
week, as part of the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges (CCSC)
Conference, Daniel Webster’s two computer science teams ranked fourth out
of 40 participating colleges when the competition — and the day — was
done.
Brian Sobodacha, of
Manchester, NH; Ahmad Sadraei, of Nashua, NH; David Provencher of Derry,
NH; Jonathan Podsiedlik, of Brattleboro, VT; and Roger Bocksnick, of
Willow Grove, NC, comprised the DWC teams.
DWC’s competition was
with colleges everyone knows, including Middlebury, RIT, Providence,
Colby, SUNY, Hamilton, and Wellesley. And it was a proud group of
students who traveled home April 20th knowing that they had
beat out some of the best.
The event was held at
the B. Thomas Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences at
RIT in Rochester, NY.
The competition itself
is an ACM style programming competition, answering five questions in three
hours, explained junior Roger Bocksnick, where organizers write a set of
problems and each team has three hours to write software to solve as many
of the problems as possible; the team with the most solutions in the least
amount of time wins.
“It can be somewhat
intimidating going in to a competition with more well-known schools,
especially when the event takes place on a big campus like RIT,” observed
Bocksnick. “But fairly quickly you realize everyone's in the same boat and
just because their school may have better name recognition, they're not
any better prepared (quite the opposite in some cases).”
“The competition focuses
on speed and accuracy, rather than the elegance of a solution, so it
forces you to be in a different mindset than you usually are when
designing software. Debugging is the single biggest time killer, so it's
important to do it right the first time.”
“Placing fourth out of
40 is certainly respectable, he added, and I'm please with our
performance. However, being so close to a "medal" position (one of the top
three) can feel more disappointing than placing tenth.”
Bocksnick said he will
be interning at Electronic Arts Mythic this summer, working on its
upcoming game. “Hopefully, they'll hire me full time after I graduate,” he
added.
DWC’s competition was
with colleges everyone knows, including Middlebury, Providence, Colby,
SUNY, Hamilton, and Wellesley. And it was a proud group of students who
traveled home April 20th knowing that they had beat out some of
the best.
This was the second year
that DWC participated in the programming contest, Said Professor Kim. “We
met on a weekly basis throughout the spring semester to prepare for the
programming contest. We discussed and prepared for software
settings/requirements, practicing with the past contest problem sets.”
“The students showed
high level of motivation and they had clear objective,” she added. “I was
and am very proud of their dedication and work demonstrated throughout the
semester and the activity.
CCSCNE brings together
faculty, staff and students from academic institutions throughout the
Northeast for exchange of ideas and information concerning undergraduate
computing curricula. The conference provides a regional forum for the
exchange of information and ideas pertaining to the concerns of computing
and computing curricula in a small academic environment.
Founded in 1965, Daniel
Webster is a student-focused independent college with a primary
concentration on experiential learning providing innovative professional
entry and advanced studies programs in computer science, gaming,
simulation and robotics, business and management, aeronautical and
mechanical engineering, aviation, and social and behavioral sciences.
Daniel Webster's
rigorous curriculum and intimate atmosphere attract some of New England's
(and beyond) most capable students and faculty to its 54-acre wooded
campus located in New Hampshire's second largest city, which twice has
been named the nation's best city in which to live.
