By Alicia Prewett
Try doing an entire semester’s worth of computer programming in one afternoon. That’s the challenge six Morningsiders faced last Saturday in the 34th annual Association for Computing Machinery International Collegiate Programming Contest. Representing Morningside were Travis Archer, Joe Danks, Kyle Gladfelder, Steven Hadley, Thomas Kuyper and April Parkison. These computer science majors contended against teams from five other colleges at the regional competition in Orange City.

The competition is dubbed “The Battle of the Brains” because it’s considered the most prestigious computing contest in the world. It’s also the largest, with students from 90 different countries participating. Winners of the regional battle travel to the World Finals in Harbin, China.

“Qualifying for The Battle of the Brains is a huge accomplishment,” said Alan Ganek, chief technology officer at IBM. “These students are tremendously talented and have the ability to solve incredibly difficult problems. They have the ability to make our lives richer and our planet smarter.”

During The Battle of the Brains, teams of three students work on one computer. They have six hours to complete as many computer programming challenges that they can. This year, both Morningside teams completed one problem each out of ten total problems. They won’t be moving onto the world competition, but they still had fun while applying what they’ve learned in their classes at Morningside.

“We always have a blast,” said Parkison, a senior. “The contest helps me to work in a group under a lot of pressure without completely losing it.” The teams went home with prizes consisting of pride and a free balloon.

The types of challenges teams faced were mainly word problems. They involved complicated math, and teams had to create a computer program to figure out the problem. The real test is trying to finish the problems during the time constraints.
“The competition helps me to roll with the punches. It’s getting your best work out there with what you have,” said Parkison. To prepare for The Battle of the Brains, students tackled practice problems administered by their coach, Professor Dean Stevens from the Computer Science department. On competition day, Stevens was one of the judges.

The competition is sponsored by the IBM Software Group. The company believes this programming contest helps create a more competitive workforce in the information technology world, leading to economic growth and steering global innovation.

“The world is a little distracted by the economy. But it’s important we focus on how to use technology such as cloud computing and social collaboration to solve big real world problems like energy waste and environmental pollution,” said Katharine Frase, vice president of technical and business strategy at IBM. “It is important that technology students think about these big concepts and figure out ways to solve them.” (Nov. 5)