Computing students participate in programming competitions
Stephanie Schiraldi and Janel Shoun-Smith |
Lipscomb students perform well at Hack Nashville, college hosts high schoolers at Spark
Say “computing major,” and it may bring up a vision of a student stuck behind a screen all day. But actually, Lipscomb University’s computing and technology majors have been busy all semester with collaborative competitions held at sites throughout the region.
The College of Computing & Technology has hosted various programming events for high school techies, and Lipscomb college students have competed in various programming competitions and events this semester.
In fact, in one weekend, Nov. 7-9, the college sponsored the StudentRND CodeDay of Nashville at the university’s Spark facility and sent a team of 13 students to Hack Nashville 6, a biannual event for software developers and designers throughout the Southeast.
CodeDay is a student programming event around the world, with over 30 cities and more than 10,000 students participating. It is designed to allow high school students to pitch an idea for a computer application and gather a team to code for 24 hours straight.
Nashville’s CodeDay was organized by a Ravenwood High School sophomore and hosted about 30 students working overnight to complete their apps. Fortune Mhlanga, dean of Lipscomb’s College of Computing & Technology, attended the event as a coding mentor, and Assistant Professor Ken Mayer served as a judge.
“The atmosphere was electric and so exciting! It is really amazing to see what the next generation of programmers and designers are going to do,” said Mayer. “The amount of work and high quality completed in 24 hours was absolutely amazing. I hope to see them coming to Lipscomb to make us shine in the future.”
On the same weekend, Lipscomb’s own students participated in Hack Nashville 6, a 48-hour hack-a-thon created to provide developers and designers an unrestrained environment to collaborate and create new programs.
The bi-annual event has been around for three years drawing participants from all over the country. About 20 universities are represented within the 500 annual attendees. The ideas developed into applications at Hack Nashville have ranged from Wi-Fi enabled smoke detectors to electronic greeting cards for kids at St. Jude’s Hospital.
This year’s participating Lipscomb students developed two of their own ideas: Urban Throne and Cal-Merge/LUL, said Austin Humphreys, a sophomore computer science major who coordinated Lipscomb’s team.
UrbanThrone is similar to the popular UrbanSpoon app except that it rates public restrooms instead of restaurants, Humphreys said. Cal-Merge/LUL is an app to help with scheduling conflicts within groups of people. The UrbanThrone group completed their app in time for the event-ending expo and received numerous votes for the best app honor.
Students who participated in the Hack Nashville Competition were: Connor Austin, Benjamin Reed, Michael Zeiger, Zach Leaver, Bryce Skelton, Patrick Fischer, Davis King, Clayton Clark, Harrison Miller, Savannah Albright, Gregory Araujo, Krysten Harvey and Kalai Davidson.
Hack Nashville co-founder Brendan Wovchko said this year’s event focused on gaining more participation from universities.
“We have been particularly tuned in to the idea that there hasn’t been a lot of great connectivity between what’s happening in the academic world and what’s happening in the professional world,” said Wovchko.
The event gives students and other professionals a chance to work on their own ideas in a group setting. Wovchko explained that software engineers often work everyday on their employer’s ideas, so they may not have a lot of time to develop their own ideas.
In early Hack Nashville events, there was a lot of participation from local university students, said Avery Fisher, another organizer of Hack Nashville.
“Now three years later we find that many of those students are going on to work for companies like EventBrite and Lonely Planet and some are going on to Silicon Valley,” said Fisher. “We’re building a base of young professionals going on to great jobs.”
Lipscomb’s computing students have participated in various programming events this semester including the Southeast Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition, where our students placed in the top eight teams; the Mid-Central USA Programming Contest held at Tennessee Tech University; and the Association for Computing Machinery 2014 Programming Competition for students, hosted in the college’s new space in the Swang Center.
In addition to participating in local programming events, Lipscomb computing students have access to at least six professional development events held on campus each year, said Finn Breland, Lipscomb’s enrollment management specialist for the computing college. Through its industry partner program, the college brings a constant stream of local professionals to campus to interact with the students and help prepare them for a future career in technology, he said.