A Saint Mary’s computer science team consisting of Lucas Heindel, Luke Rickert, and Joseph Hakanson earned first place in a programming competition at the Midwest Instruction and Computing Symposium (MICS) at their annual conference. The three computer science students were the only team to complete five problems correctly out of twenty seven teams competing.
The team was given nine programming assignments to work on during the three hour competition. The teams were ranked according to the number of programs completed correctly.
Luke Rickert, a junior majoring in computer science and minoring in data analytics and Spanish, explained that the majority of problems were algorithm based. Some dealt with word counts and rearranging characters within words and others with plotting points on a coordinate plane. Another was based on a game of poker. After reading the problem, the team worked together to assess how to best solve it and create lines of code to reach a solution.
“Our computer science classes gave us the necessary knowledge to write the code, but the experience that best prepared us for success was the opportunity to participate in this same contest last year,” said Rickert. “This taught us how to work efficiently as a team of three while under pressure.”
Sophomore computer science major Joseph Hakanson felt that programming the solution was not the hard part of each assignment, rather puzzling the problem out and assessing how to move forward as a team. Despite the challenging nature of each problem, Hakanson found satisfaction in solving each puzzle. His team spent as much time as they could to prepare themselves for what they might encounter during the competition.
“We prepared using problems from previous years, working in the car, at the event, and just an hour before the competition began,” Hakanson said.
The computer science major at Saint Mary’s places a strong emphasis on hands-on, project-based learning. Through competitions like these, students can apply their classroom knowledge and learn new skills while analyzing complex problems and designing effective solutions. The programming competition is typically the most popular event at MICS as it tests students’ ability to think under pressure while working as a team on innovative and creative programming solutions. Other activities at the conference include the presentation of technical papers and posters and a robotics competition. The conference began in 1967 in an effort to provide an educational experience to students and instructors at higher education institutions. Participants typically come from Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin.
Saint Mary’s entered a second team consisting of Brandt Knoik, Broderic Peterman and Seth Bestgen that also did well in the competition. Dr. Donald Heier and assistant professor MM Bari, the coach of both programming teams, attended the conference with students and are already preparing to send teams to the programming, robotics and a potential cybersecurity competition next year along with paper presentations based on capstone projects.
“It was fun to watch the students struggle with programming challenges and see them come together as a team to find success,” said Dr. Heier. “They really enjoyed their experience.”
Next year’s conference will be held at University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.
