Six members of the W&L Programming Club excelled at the annual Longwood Programming Competition, held October 19. The two teams of three placed second and third out of 10 teams competing.
Team ArrayList, which placed second, included senior Richard Marmorstein ’14 and two first-years, Lauren Revere ’17 and Jamie White ’17. Team UnlimitedCodeWorks placed third and included senior Garrett Koller ’14 and third-years Onye Ekenta ’15 and Samantha O’Dell ’15.
Plugging away: from left, Richard Marmorstein ’14, Lauren Revere ’17, Jamie White ’17.
In such competitions, teams try to solve as many of the programming problems as possible in the least amount of time, fuelled by doughnuts and caffeine. A solution consists of code that correctly executes for all possible correctly formatted inputs. Both teams solved five of the seven possible problems. Longwood seniors Nick Pastore, Richie Noble, and first-year Andrew Brogan placed first in the contest.
The Programming Club at Washington and Lee is led by Alex Baca ’14. The Club is now preparing for the imminent ACM Regionals competition, which will be held nationally at many sites on November 2. Go Generals!
Three W&L students, one faculty member, and one alumna attended the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The conference was the largest in GHC’s history with over 4800 attendees!
From left to right, Ginny Huang ’14, Professor Sara Sprenkle, Sam O’Dell ’15, Cory Walker ’15, and Camille Cobb ’12 pose outside the Minneapolis Convention Center under the Grace Hopper welcome sign.
Sam O’Dell ’15 and Cory Walker ’15 were awarded scholarships to attend the conference. Ginny Huang ’14 was waitlisted for a scholarship, but W&L provided some funding to help defray the cost for her attending. All three students had interviews with a variety of companies at the conference and were inspired and learned a lot from the various sessions.
Alumna Camille Cobb ’12–now a graduate student at the University of Washington–attended the conference through a scholarship that she earned as a Google intern this past summer.
The first time attending the conference is always an amazing experience–just ask Huang, who said, “I think the two best things about the conference are that 1) You get access to a lot of Computer Science opportunities! I always know that there is a great need for programmers in the market, but I never got a lot of actual access to companies that are looking for them and 2) I love all those gifts! My advice for people who attend in the future is only bring one shirt in your luggage to attend the first day of the conference. Grab the rest in the conference! It’s a good way to reduce the weight you’re carrying.”
The second time attending isn’t too shabby either, according to O’Dell, “Going to Grace Hopper again this year was absolutely incredible. I loved going to the sessions and learning about the industry I hope to work in when I graduate. In addition, I had the chance to interview with a few companies at the conference and was fortunate enough to come away with an internship for next summer. The conference is definitely a great experience and full of opportunities for women hoping to go into computer science after they graduate.”
Poster co-chairs Sara Sprenkle (left) and Kaoutar El Maghraouri (right) pose with Barbara Gee, ABI Vice President of Programs, (left) during the opening session. Photo Courtesy: Anita Borg Institute
Professor Sara Sprenkle served as the co-chair of the poster session with Kaoutar El Maghraoui from IBM. Their work included organizing the Student Research Competition, which involved 28 student participants–6 of whom became semi-finalists and presented their work in another session–and over 30 judges. Sara and Kaoutar were quite pleased with the quality of the posters and presentations and the feedback the judges gave the students.
Walker summarized the experience: “The GHC offers the unique experience of having thousands of experienced women in technology gathered in one place, all willing to share their experiences and advice with one another. The opportunity to learn from technical women of all different backgrounds was to me the most worthwhile part of the Celebration.”
Thanks to (from left to right) Richard Marmorstein ’14, Alex Baca ’14, Alicia Bargar ’13 and Phil Lisovicz ’13, Washington and Lee University students have a new web application designed to make their schedule planning easier. Corsola: Scheduling Your Life allows students to choose their preferred courses and view potential schedule conflicts. Click here to read more… http://news.blogs.wlu.edu/2013/09/12/new-corsola-web-application-helps-wl-students-plan-course-schedules/
Congratulations to all our computer science majors and minors for their outstanding work and efforts this academic year.
Graduates:
Majors
Alicia M. Bargar
Lee A. Davis
Paul Nguyen
Shannon L. McGovern
Phillip A. Lisovicz
Minors
Amy E. Clayton
Orrin H. Ingram
Ian L. Lenora
Scholarships, Awards, and Prizes
Computer Science major, Alicia M. Bargar ’13, was awarded the 2013 Computer Science Departmental Award. This prize is given annually to a Computer Science major who demonstrates academic excellence. Alicia also graduated cum laude.
Computer Science major, Oliver Mahame ’14, was awarded The James McDowell Scholarship. The James McDowell Scholarship endowed by Mrs. Mary B. Ross in memory of her father, James McDowell, former Governor of Virginia, is conferred upon an undergraduate. The award is based on the student’s record during the previous two years here at W&L.
Richard J. Marmorstein ’14, Economics, and Computer Science major was awarded The Edwin Claybrook Griffith Scholarship in Economics. This scholarship is given annually to an economics major who demonstrates academic excellence and leadership in student activities.
Wenda Tu ’14, Computer Science minor won The Williams Prize in Mathematics. The Williams Prize in Mathematics, in honor of Dr. Charles W. Williams (emeritus Professor of Mathematics), is conferred upon the junior mathematics major who has the highest grade-point average in mathematics and who plans to attend graduate school in mathematics.
Twenty-three students from CSCI 250 presented six different projects at the annual W&L Spring Term Fair in Leyburn Library — so many projects that they were given their own floor of the library for the demos! W&L innovations included using Python to fly an AR.Drone via Kinect hand gestures and to navigate a Neato XV-11 LIDAR robot around an obstacle, as well as the cool projects depicted below (Steve Goryl photo credits).
Deirdre and Haley used a Raspberry Pi to add sonar capability to their Brookstone Rover ‘bot.
Sam, Drew, Jok, and Darren built and programmed a robotic arm.
Michael, Stephen, and Hank built an R/C plane with remote pan-tilt camera and laptop controller.
Lee, James, and Colin programmed an AR.Drone to follow a moving ground vehicle.
Thirteen students in CSCI335: Software Engineering through Web Applications demonstrated their three team projects at the Spring Fest. In teams of four or five, the students gathered requirements for their project, created a static prototype, and developed a dynamic, user-friendly prototype–all in four weeks.
CSCI335 students present their applications on their laptops to students and faculty.
Each student worked on one of three projects:
The Collegium Project – a digital humanities project in collaboration with Professor Sarah Bond, a history professor at Marquette University and a former Mellon Fellow at W&L.
Corsola – a tool for visualizing course schedules and conflicts. W&L students may be able to use a version of Corsola as early as this fall.
Paul Jang ’15 demonstrates the Ancient Graffiti project to Professor Janelle GertzOlivier Mahame ’14 (l) and Cathy Wang ’15 (r) demonstrate the Collegium project to Chief Technology Officer David Saake on the big screen.
Nine W&L students competed in the annual Longwood University Programming Contest, with one of our teams (the “Direct Executioners”) placing second out of the twelve teams who competed. Students spent six grueling hours solving tricky programming problems, fueled by doughnuts, soft drinks, and team spirit. Congratulations to Onye Ekenta and Paul Jang ’15 for defeating so many tough competitors!
Left: Suraj, Anton, and Connor in full hacker mode.
Right: Garrett, Alex, and Richard set a new CS fashion standard while working on a coding problem.
Six students and one faculty member represented Washington and Lee at this year’s Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing in Baltimore, MD. The student-focused conference features both technical and professional development sessions.
Haley, Sam, Cory, and Deirdre at the entryway for the conference
Alicia Bargar ’13, Samantha O’Dell ’15, and Cory Walker ’15 were awarded ultra-competitive scholarships to attend. Having three scholarship winners from W&L–out of 300 scholarships awarded and many, many more applicants–is quite impressive! Haley Archer-McClellan ’15, Deirdre Tobin ’15, and Wenda Tu ’14 were generously supported by the Provost’s Office.
All students agreed the conference was an inspiring and motivating experience and the career fair opened their eyes to a lot of opportunities.
Some highlights:
Cory won a Ninja Coder t-shirt from Amazon for programming the Fibonacci sequence in Python
Wenda met an executive from GE and had an enlightening conversation that covered some diverse topics, including material for Wenda’s Feminist Social and Political Philosophy course.
Haley, Alicia, and Deirdre at the Inner Harbor. The RockIT Science and Systers 25th Anniversary Celebration was held at the Maryland Science Center.
Professor Sprenkle attended the conference as a representative of the GHC Academic Advisory Board, helped lead the Faculty Speed Networking session, helped organize the Faculty Lightning Talks, and served as a judge of the undergraduate student research competition.
The theme of this year’s conference was “Are We There Yet?” While the answer seems to clearly be “no”, W&L is definitely making strides in the right direction.
Most of our class of 2012 (from left to right): Camille Cobb, David Margolies, Charles Gould, Joey Brown, Anna Pobletts, and Mike White.
We are quite proud of the class of 2012 graduates from computer science!
A picture of the class of 2012 on graduation day. Back, left to right: Andrew Bennett, Joey Brown, David Margolies, Charles Gould, Mike White Front (left to right): Camille Cobb, Anna Pobletts
Sandy Hausman from WVTF reported a story about women in computer science at Washington and Lee. The story features Professor Sara Sprenkle and students Camille Cobb ’12 and Cory Walker ’15.
