High School Students Compete in Code

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Teams of high school students race to solve computer programming problems at a recent campus contest.

At a recent programming contest at the University of Arkansas, teams of high school students competed to solve as many programming problems as they could in three hours. Twenty-five teams participated, traveling from across the state and even from Louisiana.

The Executives, a team from Bentonville High School, received first prize for solving six of the eight problems in the shortest amount of time. Second place went to the League of Dapper Gentlepersons from the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts. LRCH Team 1 from Little Rock Central High school received third place, and the ASCII team from Fayetteville received the Most Improved Award. The Eagles Blue team, from the Louisiana School for Math, Science and the Arts, won the Most Creative Award. 

“Programming in teams is an important skill for students to learn, because it combines algorithmic thinking, creative problem solving, using a precise and abstract programming language and team work together. These are the skills for the new millennium where more and more activities are automated and machines are programmed do more and more things for us.” said Wing Ning Li, professor of computer science and computer engineering. Li organized and oversaw the programming contest. 

While their students were busy with the contest, high school teachers held a roundtable discussion about the field of computer science, exchanging experiences and ideas about how to get students interested in computing especially female students.

The contest was sponsored by the University of Arkansas department of computer science and computer engineering, the Association for Computing Machinery, and Acxiom.