Two teams of students from the University of Arkansas – Fort Smith placed first and fifth in a statewide computer science competition held in Conway, beating out several other colleges and universities.

 

The competition, sponsored by the Acxiom Laboratory for Applied Research, had three competitive programming divisions, Computer and Information Science, Information Systems, and Computer Science. UA Fort Smith’s winning teams were in the Computer Science division.

 

Taking first place was Sam Shores of Alma and Ryan Ewing of Fort Smith. Fifth place went to Chris Alderson of Fort Smith and Chris Dungan of Gans. The students were given eight problems to solve within a five-hour period. Teams solving the most problems the fastest were the winners. The first-place team solved six of the eight problems, one of only two teams to do so.

 

Rick Massengale of Fort Smith, information technology instructor at UA Fort Smith, said this was only the second year for UA Fort Smith to have a competitive programming team.

UA Fort Smith News Release