News Release
November 2005
Bethlehem, Pa., November 28, 2005 -- For the second time this year,
students from Moravian College have won a major computer programming competition. Three
teams of Moravian College students recently competed in the Association of Computing
Machinery (ACM) Mid-Atlantic Programming Contest that was held at Wilkes University.
The team comprised of Jeff Feist ‘06,
Bethlehem, Pa.; Robert Koepplinger ’06, Easton, Pa.; and Tyler Worman ’07,
Allentown, Pa., came in first place out of the twenty-six teams competing at Wilkes.
Also competing were two teams comprised of Moravian students, Wes
Moser ‘08, Boyertown,
Pa.; Tim Mills ‘09, Lafayette, N.J.; James Long ‘09, West Chester, Pa.; Sean
Scanlon ‘05, Bethlehem, Pa.; Eric Cuevas ’05, Bethlehem, Pa.; and Russ Zaleski ’06,
Hillsborough, N.J.
The ACM Mid-Atlantic region is divided into four sites for the competition,
one of which was Wilkes University. Moravian’s team 1 won the site competition
against teams from Lafayette College, Wilkes University, Bucknell University, Saint
Joseph's College, Muhlenberg College, University of Scranton, Susquehanna University,
Swarthmore College, Bryn Mawr College, and Lycoming College.
After combining the results from the four sites within the region,
Moravian’s
team of Feist, Koepplinger, and Worman placed ninth out of 150 teams. “This achievement
is especially significant considering the size of our institution and computer programming
department compared to the other teams in the top ten,” said Coleman. “Moravian
is the only small liberal arts school represented, and the only school without a graduate
program, whose students may participate.”
The Mid-Atlantic regional order of finish was: University of Maryland, Virginia Tech
(team 1), Virginia Tech (team 2), Duke University, Virginia Tech (team 3), Drexel University,
Penn State University, University of North Carolina, Moravian College, and Virginia Tech
(team 4).
The ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest is an activity of the Association
for Computing Machinery that provides college students with an opportunity to demonstrate
and sharpen their problem-solving and computing skills.
The contest is a two-tiered competition among teams of students representing institutions
of higher education. Teams first compete in the Regional Contests, held around the world
from September to November each year. The winning team from each Regional Contest advances
to the Contest Finals, typically held in mid-March to early April.
The Mid-Atlantic Regional Contest lasts for five hours. Each team of three students
tries to solve as many problems as possible, programming the solutions in C++ or Java.
The team that solves the most problems correctly wins, with ties broken by the least
total time (the sum of the times consumed for each problem solved, from the beginning
of the contest to the time the correct solution is submitted). A penalty of 20 minutes
for each incorrect submission is added to the total time. The penalty only applies if
the problem was eventually solved correctly.
Last month, a team from Moravian College took first place at the Consortium for Computer
Sciences in Colleges (CCSC) Eastern Conference Student Programming Contest for the second
year in a row.
