Undergraduate students from community and technical colleges and universities in Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana are invited to register to participate in the Association for Computing Machinery, or ACM, South Central Regional Collegiate Programming Contest, which will take place Nov. 6 and 7, 2009.

The regional contest is part of annual events leading up to the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest World Finals. In the semester prior to the international contest, students from universities around the world compete regionally in teams of three undergraduate students and one professor, who acts as the coach. The top regional teams worldwide earn an invitation to compete at the World Finals, which will take place in spring 2010.

LSU, through the Center for Computation & Technology and the Department of Computer Science, hosts the ACM South Central Regional Collegiate Programming Contest. This year, that contest will take place Saturday, Nov. 7, with an introductory scripting contest on Friday, Nov. 6.

The professor acting as coach must register each team by Saturday, Oct. 31 to compete in the regional competition. Teams pay a registration fee of $175, or an early bird fee of $125 if they register by Wednesday, Sept. 30. To register, visit: http://icpc.baylor.edu .

This contest is open to any undergraduates who are interested in programming, and students will have opportunities to practice in teams before the actual competition. Sites where students can participate in the 2009 ACM South Central Regional Collegiate Programming Contest are:

During the competition, teams will confront eight or more complex, real-world problems within a five-hour deadline. The teammates collaborate to rank the difficulty of the problems, deduce the requirements, design test beds and build software systems that solve the problems under the intense scrutiny of expert judges. The team that solves the most problems in the fewest attempts in the least time is declared the regional winner and advances to the international contest. The regional contest will award prizes including games, gift certificates and plaques to participating teams.

For more information on the regional competition, visit:  http://acm2009.cct.lsu.edu.