GALESBURG -- Two teams of computer science students from Knox College finished 25th and 38th out of 104 teams at the Regional Intercollegiate Programming Contest, sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery and held earlier this month at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and nine other sites.

The Knox Purple Team of Alex Baker, Drew Cousino, and Kurt Sheffer solved four of the eight problems in the contest and came in at 25th place. Twenty-four other teams also solved four of eight problems in the five-hour-long competition, in which the standings were also based on time spent on the problems.

The Knox Gold Team of Aaron Lepkin, Jim Mason, and Tyler Nichols solved three problems to finish in 38th place. Twenty-eight other teams also solved three of the eight problems.

The Knox teams are coached by professors Christopher Andrews, Don Blaheta and John Dooley, of the Knox College computer science department.

A total of 104 teams from 60 colleges and universities, mainly from Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Arkansas, took part in the regional competition.

"Knox did better than last year, when our teams finished 40th and 80th," Dooley said. "The Knox students also solved more problems this year than all but one team from other liberal arts colleges. We also fared better than teams from much larger schools, such as Illinois Institute of Technology, Arkansas Tech, St. Louis University, DePaul University, and The University of Chicago."

The top two teams, who each solved seven of the eight problems, were from the University of Illinois and Queen's University of Canada, and qualified for the finals in March 2004 in Prague. Three teams solved six problems, and three teams solved five problems. All the teams were stumped by a two-stage problem that required decoding a compressed image file, then using graph theory to analyze the image.

Founded in 1837, Knox is a national liberal arts college in Galesburg, Illinois, with students from 45 states and 42 nations. Knox's "Old Main" is a National Historic Landmark and the only building remaining from the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates.

ACM Regional Intercollegiate Programming Team
Alex Baker, Glencoe, Illinois
Drew Cousino, Olathe, Kansas
Aaron Lepkin, Englewood, Colorado
Jim Mason, Gilson, Illinois
Tyler Nichols, The Dalles, Oregon
Kurt Sheffer, Wilmette, Illinois

Knox Computer Science Program

Regional programming contest results

Drew Cousino and Alex Baker show off regional competition ribbons.