State of Alabama High School Programming Contest Hosted by UAB

The State of Alabama High School Programming Contest (HSPC) hosted by UAB brings talented students from high schools throughout Alabama to the UAB campus to participate in an organized competition. Students individually compete to demonstrate their programming skills and problem solving abilities by attempting to solve six programming problems within a three hour period. Schools that have more than three contestants are also eligible for team awards.

News!

This year's contest will be held on April 28, 2012.

Please contact Dr. Anthony Skjellum (tony@cis.uab.edu) for more information. Online registration is coming soon.

If you plan to register on-site, please let us know by Friday, April 27th, 9am, so we can have your certificate ready; otherwise certificates for on-site registrants will be sent by mail after the contest.

Related Event: The Digital Film Festival (DFF, formerly the Alice Film Festival) is a co-located event where students submit movies written in Alice or Scratch. Prior to the HSPC Awards ceremony, movies from the DFF are shown. Awards are given out at the film festival in several categories. More information about the DFF is available here.

Related Event: The CIS Department offers the UAB Summer Computer Camps - a multi-week series of summer camps for high school and middle school students. If you are interested in the camps, more information is available here.

General Information

Contest Rules

Please familiarize yourself with the contest rules before arriving on campus. If you have any questions, please contact the organizers at this address..

The official rules are available here.

Registration

Online registration is now open!

There is an early registration fee of $20 per student. Registration can also be done on site the day of the event at the regular fee of $30. 

 Please go to http://camps.cis.uab.edu and register for this event. You need to first create an account and then you will be able to register for the HSPC.

Schedule of Events (Updated)

In addition to the actual contest, a fun day is planned with food and social activities. Opportunities to meet and interact with UAB computer science faculty will be provided, as well as a keynote presentation.

Directions and Parking Information

Parking information and directions to the CIS Department can be found here.

List of Prizes (Updated)

All students will receive a T-shirt and a certificate of participation. Small prizes will be awarded to contestants with the top 10 scores. List of prizes will be published soon.

 

Category	1st Place	2nd place
Individual	Dell Laptop*	PS vita
Team	$300 Amazon gift Card	$225 Amazon gift Card

 Sample Contest Questions

        The contest problems are available from the following past competitions:

2005 Contest Problems: Problem Set

2006 Contest Problems: Problem Set

2007 Contest Problems: Problem Set and Sample Student Solutions (from top-3 finishers)

2008 Contest Problems: Problem Set and Sample Student Solutions (from top-3 finishers) 

2009 Contest Problems: Problem Set and Sample Student Solution (from Josh Swank, first place finisher)    

Keynote Presentation

The keynote speaker this year will be Betsy DiSalvo.

Betsy DiSalvo will be an Assistant Professor at Georgia Institute of Technology School of Interactive Computing in the fall of 2012 after receiving her Ph.D. from Georgia Tech this spring. Her research is rooted in the learning science, social sciences and design research. She examines how culture impacts technology use, and how we can leverage cultural values in designing learning interventions. Her dissertation work focuses on young African American male’s use of video games and why they are not leveraging their passion for gaming into an interest in computer science as other groups do. In response to this Betsy created the Glitch Game Testers program, where teens work as game testers and participate in computer science workshops. Prior to graduate school Betsy worked as a Research Scientist at the University of Pittsburgh Learning Research and Development Center where she lead the development of the Click! Urban Adventure Game, games for the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, and evaluations for technology based educational projects. In addition to academic pursuits, Betsy has extensive professional experience in project management and continues to work as an artist, creating installations and events for institutions such as the Mattress Factory Art Museum and the Walker Art Center.

Past Contests

The results of previous contests are available, including photos, problem sets, and competition rankings. The past contests are organized by year of competition:

2005 - Inaugural Competition

2006 Competition

2007 Competition

2008 Competition

2009 Competition (coming soon)

2010 Competition

Contest Organization

Organizers

To contact the organizers, please send an email to hspc@cis.uab.edu.

• Dr. Anthony Skjellum (Department Chair and Contest Chair)
• Dr. Puri Bangalore (Lab Coordinator and Co-Chair)
• Dr. Warren Jones (Contest Registration and Administrative Lead)
• Dr. Chengcui Zhang (Problem set Coordinator and co-Chair)
• Kathy Baier (Registration and Administration)
• Janet Tatum (Advertising and Administration)
• Jeffrey Frees (Grader Coordinator)

Sponsors

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the following organizations in providing resources and support to the 2011 HSPC: