STUDENTS FARE WELL IN PROGRAMMING COMPETITION

Three Lake Superior State University student teams finished in the top five of the 18 competing locally in the Association of Computing Machinery's Intercollegiate Programming Competition recently.

LSSU was one of the satellite sites for the North Central Regional competition in this annual contest sponsored by IBM and ACM.

Of the 18 teams competing locally, the LSSU team of Paul Bonamy, a senior from Grand Haven, Andrew Hooker, senior, Detroit, and Derek Wonnacot, sophomore, Sault Ste. Marie, finished second and the team of Andrew Davis, a senior from Gaylord, Stephanie Nickerson, senior, Kingsley, and Jordan Warzecha, senior, Plymouth, finished third. The LSSU team of Paul Carley, senior, Sault Ste. Marie, Lindsay Pritchard, senior, Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. and Travis Williams, senior, Sault Ste. Marie, ended up in fifth place at the site. All three teams finished one of the nine programming problems.

"LSSU was represented very well. These problems were extremely difficult," said computer science professor Mark Terwilliger, who coaches the LSSU teams with Prof. Evan Schemm. "The students had to use a combination of skills, including programming, problem-solving, mathematics and teamwork."

Other schools that competed at the local site included Northern Michigan University, Michigan Tech and Algoma University. They were among 181 teams that competed in the North Central Region, where the top team, University of Wisconsin-Madison, solved seven of the nine problems. Terwilliger said only 72 of the 181 teams solved at least one of the problems.