Nineteenth Annual CS Programming Contest

The Department of Mathematics and Computer Science of Western Carolina University is sponsoring its Nineteenth Annual Computer Science Contest. The contest will be on Tuesday, the 8th of April 2008 and is open to all public, private, and parochial high schools in Western North Carolina.

The contest is designed for students to work together in small teams to solve a series of programming programs. The contest will be held in several of the university's electronic classrooms. Each team will be assigned two computers for developing the team's programs and submitting them. The teams may consist of up to three students. Each team can use at most two computers to ensure that teams with fewer members are not at a disadvantage. It is unlikely, but possible, that we may have to limit the number of teams from any one school depending on the total number of contestants that can be accommodated.

The contest programming language is Java. The number of team awards will depend on the number of teams entered, with as many as first, second, and third places awarded. Each team is allowed to bring two reference books on Java; they may use these books during the contest.

The Java programming will be done using Sun Microsystem's Java Platform Standard Edition 6.0 which is the current version (and is also the developer version 1.6.0) and does include the Scanner class and generics. The programming environment on the machines also includes BlueJ, a simple graphical front-end to the Java Platform. BlueJ's website is www.bluej.org. More information is available at www.cs.wcu.edu/cscontest.

The easiest way to register is to send me email at holliday@email.wcu.edu containing the name of your school, your name, your contact information (email address and postal address), and the number of teams. Please register by March 25, 2008. If the number of teams that you plan to send changes, please simply update your registration by sending me email. We look forward to seeing you on the 8th of April.

Sincerely,

Mark A. Holliday
Co-Director, WCU Computer Science High School Programming Contest
Professor of Computer Science
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
432 Stilwell Building
Western Carolina University
Cullowhee, NC 28723