A prize intended to recognize talent in computer science among high school students is now open for students in the US.

The new competition is being run by the ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, and CSTA, the Computer Science Teachers Association. The ACM/CSTA Cutler-Bell Prize in High School Computing is designed to promote and encourage students in the field of computer science.

Four winners will be selected annually. They’ll each get a $10,000 prize as well as the cost of travel to the ACM/CSTA Cutler-Bell Prize in High School Computing Reception where they’ll be able to demonstrate their programs and discuss their work.

The prizes are being funded by a $1 million endowment established by two prominent computing pioneers. David Cutler, who is now a Senior Technical Fellow at Microsoft, is a software engineer, designer and developer of several operating systems including Windows NT at Microsoft and RSX-11M, VMS and VAXELN at Digital Equipment Corporation. Gordon Bell, now a researcher emeritus at Microsoft Research, is an electrical engineer and an early employee of Digital Equipment Corporation where he led the development of VAX.

In order to be eligible to enter, students must be graduating high school seniors residing and attending school in the US. Judges will look for submissions that demonstrate ingenuity, complexity, relevancy, originality, and a desire to further computer science as a discipline.

Students can submit new or current projects, and a K-12 teacher knowledgeable in computing must serve as an adviser to the student. They are allowed to offer minimal assistance, though the rules also say that teachers and peers are encouraged to test and debug final projects. The deadline for submissions is January 1, 2016.

For many students, the requirement for a K-12 teacher to act as adviser will be the trickiest part of the challenge as very few US schools teach computing as a subject, see  Teaching Coding To The Next Generation.

Comments

Make a Comment or View Existing Comments Using Disqus

or email your comment to: comments@i-programmer.info