UVA Engineering Computer Science Students Challenge High School Coders
For the past ten years, the University of Virginia Association for Computing Machinery, or ACM, chapter has hosted the High School Programming Contest in the mid-Atlantic region. The event is a fun way to get high schoolers excited about coding. This year the popular contest was held virtually on May 1. More than 70 students from all over Virginia participated.The contest was run by UVA computer science undergraduates. Kelvin Peng, a third-year computer science student served as contest director; Will Mayes, a third-year computer science student served as head judge; and, Daniel Prohaska, a fourth-year computer science student and president of the UVA ACM chapter, oversaw the event.
Student teams were challenged with coding problems based on the theme of board games and were allowed to use any integrated development environment of their choosing, along with three languages: C++, Java, and Python. Winners of the 2021 event were student teams from the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology and The Governor's School for Science & Technology.
Rich Nguyen, assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science, was the adviser to the UVA ACM chapter students. Nguyen shared results of a post-event survey that showed close to 90% of participants said that they would attend the contest again, as well as recommend it to one of their friends.
“I am honored to be a part of a long-standing tradition at UVA Engineering to host programming contests for talented students. It was rewarding to read comments from students stating how much they liked the challenges and the event,” Nguyen said. “I am proud of Kevin, Will and Daniel for their dedication and hard work to make the High School Programming Contest a huge success.”