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Student team (from left to right); Corey Skinner, Paul Buonopane, William Conner and Bradley Brownell
WELLESLEY HILLS (May 8, 2016) — MassBay Community College is pleased to announce a student computer science programing team has placed third at the 21st National Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges Northeastern (CCSCNE) regional competition. The four member student team from MassBay, placed third behind Hamilton College and Clark University, out of 39 teams that competed in the competition.
The student team participants include; Paul Buonopane of Medfield, William Conner of Mansfield, Corey Skinner of Clinton and Bradley Brownell of Southborough, who served as the team alternate. MassBay was only one of two community colleges who participated in the competition.
“MassBay has been very intentional about providing support and resources for out-of-classroom learning experiences such as the CCSCNE programming competition,” said MassBay Dean of STEM Chitra Javdekar. “Our students have demonstrated exemplary focus, collaboration and commitment to the task at hand. I am very proud of our student team who competed and placed the highest of any other team from MassBay.”
The students have been working together since September 2015. Teams were evaluated by how many problems they can correctly complete, with any ties broken by the amount of time taken to complete the program codes. Teams submitted completed codes to judges using a standard system employed by many national competitions. Judges ran the submitted code through more test, before awarding points to teams.
“I am very proud of our students’ accomplishment,” said MassBay Computer Science Professor and the team’s faculty advisor Shamsi Moussavi. “They consistently practiced for this competition for months, went to the competition fully prepared, stayed calm, composed, and fully focused on the task on hand. Their hard work paid off!”
MassBay professors Susanne Steiger-Escobar and Tony Sena also chaired the programming contest, along with Delbert Hart of SUNY Plattsburgh.
The CCSCNE started in 1996 and is one of the largest regions of the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges (CCSE). CCSCNE brings together faculty, staff, and students from academic institutions throughout the Northeast for exchange of ideas and information concerning undergraduate computing curricula. This conference provides a regional forum for the exchange of information and ideas pertaining to the concerns of computing and computing curricula in a smaller academic environment. The purpose of the Consortium is to promote the betterment of computer-oriented curricula in two- and four-year colleges and universities; to improve the use of computing as an educational resource for all disciplines; to encompass regional constituencies devoted to this purpose; and to promote a national liaison among, local, regional and national organizations also devoted to this purpose. Predominately these colleges and universities are oriented toward teaching, rather than research./p>
This year’s competition was held at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York.