The School of Communications faculty members plus Elon alumna Bettina Johnson ’06, G ’11 provided news coverage for the prestigious international programming competition held in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Associate Teacher Amanda Sturgill, Senior Lecturer Randy Piland and Elon alumna Bettina Johnson ’06, G ’11 provided event coverage Nov. 6-11 as part of a media team for the International Collegiate Programming Contest’s (ICPC) Globe Finals within Dhaka, Bangladesh. ICPC is hailed as one of the world’s most prestigious computer programming contests with regard to university-level students, and it attracts top students through across the globe.
More than 50, 000 students competed in this year’s competition, which featured 137 teams from nearly 70 countries within the contest’s final round. According in order to Sturgill, contestants work in groups of three to solve more than ten challenging computer-programming problems set by an international cadre associated with judges. Participants compete for a chance to win prizes and have their institution’s name inscribed upon the ICPC Cup.
This year’s winning team was from the particular Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), prevailing over runners-up from Peking University in Beijing and the University of Tokyo.
A longtime photojournalist, Piland worked as an event photographer while Sturgill and Manley served as producers regarding ICPCNews , the organization’s news platform, overseeing photo, video plus social media coverage. Johnson graduated through Elon within 2006 with a degree in journalism and returned to study in the Interactive Media master’s program during the 2010-11 academic year. Currently, she serves because a content marketing and communications manager intended for IFCO Systems in Germany.
Sturgill and Piland have been regular contributors to past ICPC news coverage, along with Sturgill most recently leading an Elon student group at the 2020 North America Championship . Piland has also worked with the contest for several years, traveling to Russia, Thailand, Portugal and other locations since a part of the experience.
“As the journalism teachers member, work like this helps me personally expand my skill set plus to stay current on what is happening in the industry. I bring those experiences right back into the classroom, ” Sturgill said. “For example, the analytics writing students will, tomorrow, be doing a strategic analysis of the analytics from our Facebook and YouTube posts during the occasion. ”