SBCC Computing Team Wins First Place in Southern California Programming Contest | School zone

At the Southern California International College Programming Competition (ICPC) held February 25-26, Santa Barbara City College won the top honor for two-year colleges for the second year in a row.

The ICPC is a programming challenge for students to solve real-world problems, fostering collaboration, creativity, innovation, and the ability to perform under pressure.

Held in Riverside, California, 48 teams from 15 Southern California institutions competed to solve a set of 10 programming problems in five hours. The problem posed was particularly difficult this year, with no team solving all the problems.

SBCC Yellow – the team consisting of Jaden Baptista, Chen-Wei Chou and Daniel Schaffield – took first place among two-year schools.

Also competing were SBCC Blue: Ricardo Arana, Sarah Duncan and Aleksandar Nisavic; and SBCC Red: Paulo Aguirre, Jordan Ayvazian and Vanessa Santillan.

“The ICPC SoCal competition is a unique experience that allows us to apply our knowledge in the classroom by working together to solve difficult problems,” said Chou of SBCC Yellow. “The CCSC provided me with a good opportunity to participate in this event, to encourage us to acquire knowledge on a programming instance and apply it to other cases.”

Summing up her experience, Vanessa Santillan said, “The competition was the most fun five-hour lineup ever. As a woman in tech, I realized how important my presence and participation is in these events. I hope to compete again.”

In addition to hosting regional competitions, ICPC is a global platform that enables academia and industry to spotlight and elevate the aspirations of the next generation of IT professionals as they pursue excellence.

Computer science teacher and coach Stephen Strenn expressed how proud he is of the students: “They studied, trained and collaborated to solve interesting problems. And I have to say, after two years of the pandemic, it was really refreshing to spend quality time with our quality students.