LeTourneau University is hosting a remote site of the South Central regional 2009 International Collegiate Programming Competition sponsored by IBM.
The contest pits teams of three university students against eight or more complex, real-world problems, with a five-hour deadline. Huddled around a single computer, competitors race against the clock in a battle of logic, strategy and mental endurance.
The competition is being held through today simultaneously on the campuses of LeTourneau, Texas A&M, Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge, Abilene Christian University and Eastern Oklahoma University. The schools competing at LeTourneau include the host team, The University of Texas at Dallas and The University of Texas at Tyler.
"The South Central USA Programming Competition offers outstanding programmers from across Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana the opportunity to participate in a competitive programming challenge to determine which two teams will represent the region in the IBM-sponsored 2010 World Programming Finals to be held at Hardin Engineering University in China," said Dr. Brent Baas, LeTourneau's professor and computer science department chair. "As teams prepare for the regional competition, they strengthen both their competence and confidence in their programming abilities. The competition offers them the opportunity to showcase their skills to the world."
Teammates collaborate to rank the difficulty of the problems, deduce the requirements, design test beds, and build software systems that solve the problems under the intense scrutiny of expert judges. For a well-versed computer science student, some of the problems require precision only. Others require a knowledge and understanding of advanced algorithms. Still others are simply too hard to solve—except, of course, for the world's brightest problem-solvers.
The World Finals will be held Feb. 1-6, 2010 at Harbin Engineering University in Harbin, China. One hundred world finalist teams will compete for awards, prizes and bragging rights. These teams represent the best of the great universities on six continents—the cream of the crop.
