ZR
Zachary Rivett
  • computer science
  • Howell, MI

Zach Rivett and his Olivet computer science team place in top 10 percent in regional programming contest

2015 Nov 24

Zach Rivett of Howell, Michigan, and his computer science team from Olivet Nazarene University placed in the top 10% of teams that competed in the 2015 Mid-Central U.S.A. Regional Collegiate Programming Contest (MCPC), a division of the Association for Computing Machinery's (ACM) annual International Collegiate Programming Contest. Rivett is a senior majoring in computer science at Olivet.

This three-man team, known as the "ONU Tigers," tied for 15th place in this November 7th competition. Dr. Cathy Bareiss, chair of the Department of Computer Science in the Walker School of Engineering, is the team's faculty sponsor.

The Olivet team competed in a field of 155 teams that included the University of Chicago, Wheaton College (Illinois), Saint Louis University, Northwestern University, Vanderbilt University, Indiana University and Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. The University of Chicago hosted the regional competition.

Each team in the MCPC competition received nine problems with a time limit of five hours to program complete solutions. The teams' final rankings depended in part on the amount of time devoted to solving each problem. Olivet's team solved six of the nine problems in the allotted time. No team solved more than eight problems.

"I learned that success in this competition is just as much about communication as it is about problem solving," said team member Zach Rivett. "Sometimes it takes a few heads working together to solve the tougher problems."