Northwestern students place during computer programming competition

A team of three Northwestern College students placed second among the 15 teams at the Northwestern site during the regional Association for Computing Machinery International Collegiate Programming Contest on Oct. 29.

The Northwestern team took second place by correctly solving four of the twelve problems in the five-hour competition. Team members—TJ Gudeman, a senior computer science major from Tucson, Ariz.; Ashton Graves, a junior computer science major from Le Mars, Iowa; and Tung Tran, a senior computer science major from Vietnam—also placed 21st out of the 215 teams competing at 15 sites in the North Central region.

“Placing inside the top 10 percent of all participating teams is definitely something to be proud of,” says Mike Wallinga, director of institutional research at Northwestern and site director for the event.

A second Northwestern team—Sawyer Breland, a freshman computer science major from Seymour, Mo.; Jaaziel Meribole, a sophomore computer science major from Gambia; and Josh Zollinger, a sophomore computer science and exercise science major from Williamsburg, Iowa—answered one question correctly and placed 12th out of 15 at the site competition.

The ACM collegiate programming contest is a multi-tier, team-based programming competition with a global network of colleges and universities hosting regional contests around the world. Participation has grown to tens of thousands of students and faculty in computing disciplines from more than 2,000 universities representing over 91 countries.

During the contest, three team members are given five hours to solve several programming problems on a single computer. The winning team is the one that solves the most problems with the fewest attempts and within the least amount of time.

Northwestern College is a Christian college of more than 1,250 students in Orange City, Iowa. Rated a top-10 Midwestern college by U.S. News & World Report magazine, Northwestern provides an education committed to academic rigor and a Christ-centered worldview.