SCUSA

Contest Welcome

Welcome to the 2019 South Central Regional Programming Contest! We are very happy to be your host again. This year we welcome you too the following sites:

(In the future we would love to have more sites -- please volunteer).

This year, as in years past, our goal is to host a contest that will challenge the competitors while also providing a benchmark for their progression towards computing mastery. This contest will be the gateway to the next level of ICPC competition.

ICPC has the goal of invlving as many different schools and as many individual students as possible each year. The more schools and teams that participate in our regional, the greater the chance that additional team(s) form our region will advance. ICPC defines participation as solving at least one problem.

This regional contest consists of a lot of different groups. It includes:

Three complete states (Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana)
Schools that have graduate programs and schools that don't
Males and females
Numerous nationalities and cultures
Multiple majors and many minors are represented
Some have practiced for a long time to get here - others much less

Regardless, we all are interested in computing, in working together, in transcending differences and furthering the future that computing can bring to us and the the rest of the world..

This contest is a chance for each of the contestants to test their skills at comprehension, analysis, problem solving, coding, debugging, resource management, self control, and communication. This is also a chance for coaches to measure the effectiveness of their teaching and leadership.

On Saturday, we will crown a number of specific champions:

Overall champion
Best finish for a school with a graduate CS program
Best finish for a school without a graduate CS program
Best finish for a community or junior college.
State champions (Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma)
First to solve each problem

Regardless of who takes which titles, everyone here will be a winner! Each student will have won by gaining the experience of working as part of a team to accomplish a goal. Each coach will have won by having the opportunity to work with bright, motivated students. Each team that practiced and competed will have already won the right to represent their school. Each university and college will have won through being represented by their teams and coaches. Our region will have won via the excellent skill and good sportsmanship that will occur.

The metric will not be how many problems you solve. It will not be where you finish in the final standings. I am sure many will point at these, but success will be best measured by how much of your potential you achieve and how effective you function as a team. Remember - you will go home with your team members.

Along with being a host for this contest, I am also a coach, and now I am going to tell you what I have told the LSU students who have worked hard for the chance to compete in this contest:

You should all stop and realize that you are already winners. You have already been chosen to represent your school. This means that you have shown ability, a willingness to work for an important goal, and a desire to do your best. Just being here means that you have made it to the semi-finals!

This year you will may email a copy of your resume to SCUSA Resumes Make sure you have your career services department look at your resume before you decide it is your final version! On your resume be sure to put your team name under the "Education" section so that it is easy for the IBM representatives to identify your team.

Once again, we thank each student, coach, site director, university staff and faculty and volunteers that participate to make this contest possible. Thank YOU for competing and making this contest necessary!

Now for some details:

We have tried to make this contest less of a hassle for the teams and the coaches by providing systems for each team. This solves many problems:

Teams don't have to borrow systems to use for the contest
No fear over loss or damage of school equipment
No time spent building the system for the contest
No all nighter on Friday while getting your system certified
Almost equal systems (performance and software)

With any luck, the contestants will have a good night's sleep before the contest (one of the reasons that practice ends at 10:00 PM). By the way, the labs that we will be using are all public access student labs (normally) or computerized classrooms. You will have plenty of room to do your work.

We hope that you also agree that the many advantages of this environment outweigh the few disadvantages (if you don't agree yet, think about gathering all your stuff up after the contest :).

Friday will include check-in, open practice, official welcome, and the formal covering of the rules (and maybe more if we can figure out how).

Each team member and coach will receive a t-shirt (team members must wear their shirts during the contest on Saturday). We will have prizes for the top spots and we hope to continue the tradition of a prize for each team that is the first to solve a problem.

Once again, welcome! If we can do anything for you, please ask.

Thanks to:

Baylor University
- Greg Hamerly
- His team of system administrators, network administrators, faculty, staff and students
Louisiana State University
All the volunteers who have worked so hard to make this happen
You - for being here