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UAM PROGRAMMING TEAMS WIN TOP SPOTS

Saturday, February 28, 2009 11:52 PM CST

SPECIAL TO THE COMMERCIAL

MONTICELLO — Computer programming teams from the University of Arkansas at Monticello captured first and second place in the CIS COBOL division of the 2009 Arkansas Collegiate Programming Contest held recently at the University of Central Arkansas.

The contest is sponsored annually by the TresNet Division of Acxiom Corporation. The competition is divided into two sections — Computer Information Systems (CIS) and Computer Science (CS). Students competing in the CIS section may choose to program in COBOL, or a non-COBOL language. Twenty-six teams representing every four-year institution in the state competed, with 11 teams in the CIS division and 15 in the CS division.

The UAM team of Michael Howard, a senior from Linden, Texas, Freddie Gibson, a senior from Winchester, and Monticello sophomore Caleb Satterlee won the CIS division. Competing in the contest for the third consecutive year, Howard, Gibson and Satterlee solved the first programming problem in 16 minutes, breaking their previous contest record of 22 minutes.

Finishing second in the CIS COBOL division was the UAM team of Richard Vaughn, a senior from DeWitt, Calvin Davis, a senior from Monticello, and Kyle Knight, a junior from Hamburg.

Both teams spent four weeks practicing and holding mock competitions, according to Lori Selby, associate professor of CIS. “These are an exceptional group of students,” said Selby. “I thought our first team would win, but they didn’t just want to win — they wanted to break their existing record. Our second team worked very well together in their first competition. They did an outstanding job.”

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