The student chapter of Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Club at USI hosted its second annual Hackathon Saturday, February 22 in USI’s Carter Hall. This was a 12-hour event packed with coding-based creativity. There were more than 20 attendees, including students, faculty and information systems professionals.
Three main projects were provided by a mix of startups and industries in the area. A project sponsored by Dana Tang '17 M'19, computer science, highlighted developing an app for her startup project for Swonder Ice Arena. Another project was provided by Josh McWilliams, instructor in computer information systems, through which student teams worked on capturing and processing image information and retrieval from wireless SD memory cards. Metronet, one of the nation's only 100% fiber optic telecommunications providers, also sponsored a project on data warehousing automation. The projects were challenging and extremely engaging.
The Hackathon culminated with each team presenting their ideas and final solutions to a panel of judges, comprised of USI computer science faculty members Scott Anderson, Dr. Xue Han and Wendy Wooldridge.
Students not only used their computing and programming skills but enjoyed the networking opportunity. Not only USI students participated; students from University of Evansville participated and found the Hackathon to be a good learning event, considering it very innovative, hands-on and collaborative.
“In the Romain College of Business, we seek to prepare our students for the 21st century workforce. Collaborative, competitive and time-sensitive activities like these give our students the real-world skills and experience they will need when they enter the job market. These students work hard and they love what they do,” remarked Dr. Cathy Carey, dean of the Romain College of Business.
The day-long coding marathon was organized by the ACM Club’s faculty advisor, Dr. Srishti Srivastava, assistant professor of computer science, and ACM Club president Joe Howland ’20, computer science. The event was sponsored by the Romain College of Business. Dr. Abbas Foroughi, chair of management and information sciences, called the event “highly successful” and expressed his appreciation for the support of University administration. “We are very grateful to Provost Khayum and Dean Carey for dropping by and for their role in supporting the Hackathon. This meant a lot to our students and our colleagues."
Published February 26, 2020