Programming Contest Smashes Record

The annual Siena High School Programming Contest set several records this year for participation - and pizza.

The April 12 event, run by the computer science department, set a record for the number of participating high schools (32), number of teams (100), number of students (371), number of Siena volunteers (70 students/alumni and 13 faculty), number of workspaces (100 for strategy and 100 computer stations) and, impressively, number of pizzas (225).

"The contest creates strong bonds between computer science faculty members and students," said Prof. Jim Matthews, professor of computer science and long-time coordinator of the event. "Everyone needs to do their job to make the contest a success. Observing the high school students is reward enough, but we always appreciate the many thank you messages we receive from the high school teachers."

Participants are reminded by officials that it's OK to compete with the goal of doing better than other teams, and that it's also OK to compete against the problem set. Those with some programming experience wear gold shirts; rookies wear green.

When the starting whistles blow it marks the beginning of three intense hours of creative and strategic thinking. Teams must decide which students will work on which problems, and who is going to get the computer and for how long. (Those 225 pizzas helped reduce the tension level.) There is a scoreboard that everyone can see for most of the contest but its display is turned off toward the end to build a dramatic finish.

This year the first, second, and third place trophies for the Gold Level went to teams from Scarsdale, Niskayuna, and Scarsdale. The Green Level winners were from Emma Willard, Coxsackie-Athens, and Saratoga Springs. For some graduating seniors it was their fourth contest.

"The most enjoyable part of volunteering was seeing all the students come together from different schools across the state to compete," said Maggie Frechette '24. "The joy and excitement the students had was so beautiful. It made me realize why I fell in love with computer science to begin with."

Trevor Collins '24 also enjoyed volunteering - it was a Friday evening of hanging out with friends, eating pizza, and "watching organized, enjoyable chaos ensue with some classic competition."

"Hopefully the high schoolers were able to take away the strong sense of community that Siena's computer science department has," he said. "I also hope it piqued their interest in pursuing computer science in college."

Siena has been offering the contest each year since 1986, and it has since grown to 10 times the size of the original event. It started out with a dozen high school teams of four students each, using faculty offices for workspaces. Teams were given seven problems and one computer. The goal was to write programs to solve as many of the problems as possible - and to get the students more excited about computer science and Siena College.

The number of participants began to increase over the years, but participation really took off in 2018 when Tony Civitella '91 and his company, Transfinder, signed on to sponsor the event. (Civitella actually competed at the second contest when he was a senior at Mt. Pleasant High School in Schenectady.)

In 2018 almost every seat in Key Auditorium was filled with high school students wearing green and gold contest shirts. High school teachers and Siena volunteers packed the back of the room. When the event was over, Civitella expressed amazement at how the event had grown since he participated as a high schooler. Matthews agreed it was great, but noted they had to turn away 100 other kids. The rest of their conversation went something like:

Civitella: "What?! What do you need to get them here?"
Matthews: "More shirts and more pizza."
Civitella: "Call me next week."

Matthews made the call, and Civitella enthusiastically doubled his sponsorship pledge.

"The students who attend are already winners since they are part of the five percent of high school students who take a computer science course while in high school," said Matthews.