Jan. 17, 2006
Contact: Gordon
Ovenshine: 724-738-4854; gordon.ovenshine@sru.edu
17 REGIONAL
HIGH SCHOOLS TO PARTICIPATE IN FEB. 21
SLIPPERY ROCK
UNIVERSITY COMPUTER SCIENCE CONTEST
The
scholarships will go to the three highest-placing individuals who
choose to come to SRU.
A principal
feature of the competition is that participants will use RockTest,
a computer program developed by SRU’s Michael Conlon,
assistant professor computer science.
RockTest makes it easy for competitors to
write their programs regardless of what "development environment"
software they use at their home school, Conlon said. This levels
the playing field, so a school that uses the same development
environment as SRU does not have an advantage. It also helps teams
to submit their programs for grading and enables judges to grade
rapidly and keep score.
SRU and California State University at
Sacramento are the only institutions that have created and
distributed such software, he said.
Students will work at
the competition in teams of three. Each team will be given a
set of 10 problems to solve by writing a computer program. After
writing what they think is a correct program, they submit it to the
judges. The judges run the program against official data, and, if
the output is correct, the team scores one point. At the end of the
contest period, the team with the most points wins.
High
school computer programming teachers selected the participants. The
following high schools are sending students: Seton-LaSalle, Beattie
Technical School, Blackhawk, Indiana Area, Upper St. Clair, Knoch,
Union, Trinity, Taylor Allderdice, Clarion Area, North Hills,
Cornell, Thomas Jefferson, Elk County Catholic High School,
Burrell, Hopewell and Greater Latrobe.
The
contest also offers a lower division competition for freshman and
sophomores and an upper division open to all high school students.
All participants receive a T-shirt, disks of software and
certificates of participation. The top two schools in each division
receive plaques.
SRU's bachelor of science
in computer science and five information systems business-related
degree programs have been accredited by ABET, a prestigious
organization that includes the Association for Computing Machinery
and the Association for Information Technology Professionals, among
other professional organizations.
SRU’s
computer science department has 230 majors in three-degree
programs: computer science, information systems, and information
technology.
#PN,
PR