Washington College Hosts IBM Executives for Talks to Mark 100th Anniversary of “Big Blue”

CHESTERTOWN, MD—Washington College welcomes three IBM executives to campus Wednesday, Nov. 2 to mark the 100th anniversary of a company that has transformed the business world and remained vital through a century’s worth of technological and social challenges. This event, entitled “IBM at 100: An American Icon's Global Impact on Business and Corporate Citizenship” will take place at 7:30 p.m. in Decker Theatre, Gibson Center for the Arts.

The moderator will be Norris Commodore ’73, a graduate of Washington College and member of its Board of Visitors and Governors who is Director for Worldwide Contracts and Negotiations at IBM. He will introduce two IBM colleagues as speakers: Catherine Lasser, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of the Global Distribution Sector of IBM Sales and Distribution; and Sally Scott Marietta, Program Manager for Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Affairs. Lasser and Marietta will paint a picture of IBM that includes both technology and corporate social responsibility.

IBM, often called “Big Blue,” ranks 18th on the 2011 Fortune 500 list and is first on Fortune’s list of Information Technology Services firms. As a recent article in USA Today points out, “IBM has consistently bet on the introduction of new technology, from time clocks, butcher scales and coffee grinders; to punch-card machines and typewriters; to tape storage, mainframes and personal computers; to acquiring the consulting arm of PricewaterhouseCoopers; and, now, to smart social media.”

Catherine C. Lasser joined IBM in 1978 and has held both technical and leadership positions during her career. In her current role, she links the company’s technical expertise with consumer needs to get real-world solutions into the market quickly. She holds a BA in mathematics and computer science from SUNY Binghamton and an MBA in Finance from Iona College.

Sally Scott Marietta directs IBM’s community engagement and corporate citizenship in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. Prior to joining IBM, she was Executive Director of the Maryland Economic Development Commission and, before that, vice president of The Greater Washington Board of Trade. She serves on the boards of several major grant-making groups and is a member of the Steering Committee of the Maryland Business Roundtable for Education. She also is active in the Roundtable’s Tapping America’s Potential Coalition and its Business Coalition for Student Achievement.

The evening with IBM is sponsored by the Business Management Department, the Mathematics and Computer Science Department, the Global Perspectives: Research and Writing Program, the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, the Sigma Beta Delta Business Honor Society, and Washington College Students in Free Enterprise (WC SIFE). It is free and open to the public.

MIT Professor Examines Impact of iPods, iPads and Facebook on Human Relationships

CHESTERTOWN, MD—In the brave new world of Facebook, “smart phones” and Twitter, where both teens and adults would rather type than talk, are we more in touch but more isolated than ever before?

Psychologist Sherry Turkle, who has researched technology's effects on society for more than three decades, explores this seeming contradiction in her new book, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, released earlier this year by Basic Books. She will share her insights (face-to-face!) in a talk Thursday, March 24 at Washington College.

Sponsored by the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, the event will begin at 6:30 p.m. with a book signing, followed by a 7 p.m. talk in Decker Theatre, Gibson Center for the Arts, on the College campus, 300 Washington Avenue. (Turkle was originally scheduled to visit Chestertown in early February, but had to postpone her trip because of extreme weather.)

Tagged “an important, controversial new book” by the Boston Globe, Turkle's provocative work has generated a great deal of media buzz, recently winning its author a guest appearance on The Colbert Report. The Guardian (UK) highlighted the book as a “cri de coeur” for putting down the BlackBerry, ignoring Facebook, and shunning Twitter, applauding it for its success in sparking debate about the merits of social networking.

Turkle is Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and also the founder and director of MIT's Initiative on Technology and Self. Dubbed “the Margaret Mead of digital culture” by an MIT colleague, she has been profiled in the New York Times, Scientific American, and Wired Magazine and has been a featured media commentator for CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, and NPR.

“Anxiety is part of the new connectivity,” Turkle finds, and these “anxieties migrate, proliferate.” Places like Facebook foster self-expression, but that self is often a fabrication. The same is true in social networking games such as Second Life, where participants create avatars that are better-looking, smarter, and more accomplished than themselves. This constant and intense connectedness often gets in the way of building a more real, face-to-face network of friendships, and may even interference with psychological development. Turkle argues that this generation of teenagers, accustomed to interacting with others through machines, are less empathetic than their predecessors, less mindful of the feelings of those around them.

“Social media has become an ingrained part of most of our lives,” says Adam Goodheart, Hodson Trust-Griswold Director of the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience. “But as Sherry Turkle reminds us, it’s not something we should embrace without question.”

The talk and book signing are free and open to the public. Co-sponsors include the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, the Department of Psychology, and two student groups, Psychology Club and Psi Chi, the Washington College chapter of the national psychology honor society. For more on Alone Together, visit http://www.alonetogetherbook.com.

About the Starr Center
Based in the Custom House along Chestertown's colonial waterfront, the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience at Washington College fosters the art of written history and explores our nation's past – particularly the legacy of its Founding era – in innovative ways, through educational programs, scholarship and public outreach. For more information on the Center, visit http://starrcenter.washcoll.edu.

Student Programmers Score High in ACM Contest

Chestertown, MD, October 28, 2006 — Teams from Washington College participated in the Mid-Atlantic regional playoffs of an international programming contest run by the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) October 28. One of the teams, the WC Wildcats, placed 17th out of 135 teams, higher than opponents from Johns Hopkins and UMBC, and just below a team from Maryland at College Park. A second team, the WC Wolves, placed 100th overall.

The Wildcats were also awarded a plaque for being the top team at the local site—after placing above Delaware, Drexel, Rowan, and Temple.

These results are the strongest showing of any Washington College programming team since they started competing in 1998. Professor Shaun Ramsey of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science coached the teams. The Wildcats consisted of sophomores Samuel Evans and Ben Kozlowski, and senior Lucas Gerber. The Wolves, playing with one member absent, consisted of senior Jeremy Alexander and freshman Timothy Gelner.

The contest, sponsored by the IBM Corporation and Google, is a five-hour marathon where teams of three persons are given a single computer and a set of 8 problems to solve. Solutions are submitted electronically and judged at a location in Virginia. Scoring is done by awarding points for the number of minutes taken until a correct solution is submitted. If a submitted solution is incorrect, the team is sent a cryptic message on the lines of "wrong output," and may resubmit with further penalties. At the end of the contest the team with the lowest total points and highest number of solved problems wins. The prize for solving a problem is a much-coveted, helium-filled, colored balloon. A sense of the difficulty of the problem-set is obtained by the sobering fact that only one team in the mid-Atlantic solved 5 problems, and thirty-six solved none. Washington College solved two, and that was good enough to be the leader among the ten teams at this site.

Washington College was one of nine sites that hosted the contest. Running a site is a carefully choreographed operation. The site-directors were Louise Amick and Austin Lobo who were assisted by Michael McLendon and Jennifer Whitehead. The contest was held in the Goldstein 100 classroom with top-of-the-line IBM laptop computers. Keeping the networks functioning, monitoring the flow of data, were engineers Cal Coursey and David DeMarsi. The laptops were connected to a central computing server named Albert, after a respected former professor, which in turn linked up with the contest server in Virginia. Responsible for all the underlying software was the Systems Administrator, Ted Knab. Hardware and software rested on the computing infrastructure set up by CIO Billie Dodge. Under site-judge Martin Suydam, the contest started at noon and ran smoothly to completion.

The success of the teams and the site stems from a long-term commitment to computing science and technology by the College's administration. Washington College has offered a minor in computer science for nearly four decades. The computer science major was established in 2000 within the Department of Mathematics, with two graduates emerging in 2001. The first person to receive the degree was a woman.

Computer Science at Washington College stays true to the sprit of a liberal education. Students are put through a rigorous curriculum balanced between theory and practice that prepares them for careers and graduate school. Many take second majors in areas like mathematics, art, philosophy, and biology.

Computer programming is taught under the Windows and Linux operating systems and the students learn industry-standard programming techniques in the C++ and Java languages. Beyond the core courses, the students study the theory of computation and algorithm design, databases and networks, and round off their training with a capstone course in software engineering that emphasizes teamwork and the management of large programming projects.

Students have learning opportunities outside the class, such as in the Computing Club. They also do internships, independent study, and guided research projects. In the summer of 2006, Kozlowski worked on a challenging problem in computer graphics under Ramsey, and Evans implemented a major component of a code-breaking algorithm under Lobo. Three past leaders of the programming teams have become PhD candidates, with one already finished and the other two in progress. A fourth went on to do biomedical engineering and now designs prostheses.

Four team members will return next year, supplemented by promising first-year students. A proposal is in the works to host an NSF sponsored conference in computer science, and next year there will be a new computer server nicknamed Sampson for its power and in honor of a former president of the college.

WC Collegiate Programmers Take on Region's Best in the 30th Annual "Tech Olympics," November 12

Chestertown, MD, November 8, 2005 — For the fourth year in a row, Washington College's Department of Mathematics and Computer Science will be a host site for the Mid-Atlantic regional playoff round of the "Tech Olympics," the 2005-2006 Association for Computing Machinery's International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC), sponsored by IBM. Student programmers representing teams from Washington College, Rowan University, Temple University, and the University of Delaware will go head-to-head, laptop-to-laptop on Saturday, November 12, in the College's Goldstein Hall.

Now in its 30th year, the ACM competition is the largest and most prestigious contest of its kind, bringing the world's brightest collegiate programmers together to tackle a semester's worth of real-world programming tasks in one afternoon. The entire competition is conducted electronically with submissions made to a central site for independent judging.

Washington College's two teams, the Wolves and the Wildcats—coached by Computer Science Professor Shaun Ramsey—will be up against some of the Mid-Atlantic's best student programmers in a grueling five-hour competition that tests not only their problem-solving ability, but also their command of today's most advanced computer architecture. This year, Washington College will be represented by students Stephen Reaves '06, Washington, DC; Brian Standifer '06, Union Bridge, MD; Lucas Gerber '07, Galena, MD; Eric Shan '07, Ellicott City, MD; Sam Evans '09; and Molly Gavin '07, Severna Park, MD.

"The teams have five hours to solve six programming problems, and to say these are challenging is an understatement," said Professor Austin Lobo. "Most teams don't solve even one problem correctly but over the last few years our Washington College teams have averaged three correct solutions and that's an accomplishment that puts us among the top college and university teams from the entire Mid-Atlantic region."

There are as many teams in the Mid-Atlantic regional as there are in all of Europe.

Lobo added, "Our ability to host this contest rests on our exceptionally good computing infrastructure and the dedication and competence of the members of the Office of Information Technology."

Over the span of the next three months, regional competitions across the globe are expected to draw more than 5,000 teams all vying for a spot at the World Finals to be held April 9-13, 2006, in San Antonio, Texas.

Compute This! WC's Collegiate Programmers Take On Region's Best In The 29th "Tech Olympics," November 13

Chestertown, MD, November 4, 2004 — For the third year in a row, Washington College's Department of Mathematics and Computer Science will host a Mid-Atlantic regional of the “Tech Olympics,” the 2004-2005 Association for Computing Machinery's International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC), sponsored by IBM. Under the direction of professors Louise Amick and Austin Lobo, student programmers from Washington College, Drexel University, Rowan University, Temple University, United States Naval Academy and the University of Delaware will go head-to-head, laptop-to-laptop on Saturday, November 13, from 1-6 p.m. in the College's Goldstein Hall.

Washington College's two teams, the Wolves and the Wildcats—coached by professors Michael McLendon and Shaun Ramsey—will be pitted against some of the Mid-Atlantic's best in a grueling six-hour competition that tests the limits of their logic, problem-solving ability and command of today's most advanced computer architecture. Entering its 29th year, the ACM competition has grown into the largest and most prestigious contest of its kind, bringing the world's brightest collegiate programmers together to tackle a semester's worth of real world programming tasks in one afternoon, while vying for a spot at the contest's World Finals. The entire competition is conducted electronically with submissions made to a central site for independent judging.

“The teams are given seven problems to solve is six hours, and one-quarter of the teams don't solve even one problem, let alone all seven—it's just that challenging,” said Austin Lobo, associate professor of computer science. “Solving one makes you pretty darn good, but over the last few years our Washington College teams have averaged three, which put us among the top 20 teams last year from the Mid-Atlantic, the largest region in the ACM competition.”

There are as many teams in the Mid-Atlantic regional as there are in all of Europe.

“It's clear that our best students are as good as the best from neighboring universities,” he added, “and our computing infrastructure is top-notch.”

Washington College To Host Collegiate Computer Programming Contest, November 8

Annual Competition Fosters Next Generation of Technology Talent

Chestertown, MD, October 8, 2003 — On Saturday, November 8, Washington College will host a Mid-Atlantic regional elimination round of the 2004 Association of Computing Machinery's International Collegiate Programming Contest (ACM-ICPC). The contest is being organized by the College's Department of Mathematics and Computer Science under the direction of professors Louise Amick and Austin Lobo.
Washington College will field three teams of students coached by Professors Michael McLendon and Foster McGeary. They will be pitted against nine other teams from the U.S. Naval Academy, Drexel University, Rowan University, and the University of Delaware. In the contest, each three-member team is given five hours and one computer to solve eight programming problems. The problems are so challenging that getting two correct is considered to be good. Scoring is based not only on correctness but also on the number of minutes taken to devise a solution. Many teams fail to get even a single problem correct. The entire contest is conducted electronically with submissions made to a central site for independent judging. The Mid-Atlantic region with 163 teams is the largest in the United States and third largest in the world.
This is the second year for Washington College to be a regional host site, to the credit of the College's state-of-the art computing facilities. Increasing enrollments in mathematics and computer science have allowed the expansion from two teams last year to three teams this year. “While both of our teams did very well last year, we are expecting even better results this time,” said Austin Lobo, associate professor of mathematics and computer science. “We have four seasoned veterans from last year's competition who are returning to represent us.”
The nine students representing Washington College this year are Jay Van Der Wall, senior from Wilmington, DE, and double-major in mathematics and computer science; Sunipa Saha, senior from Jos, Nigeria, and double-major in biology and computer science; Walker Dowling, senior from Chestertown, MD, and major in computer science; Hanh Nguyen, senior from Hanoi, Vietnam, and major in mathematics and computer science; Amanda Feigley, senior from Quakertown, PA, and major in mathematics; David Earle, junior from Annapolis, MD, and double-major in mathematics and computer science; Christopher Hayden, junior from Owings, MD, and double-major in physics and mathematics; Stephen Reaves, sophomore from Washington, DC; and Reid Cohn, sophomore from Chesapeake City, MD.
Now in its 28th year, the ACM-ICPC competition is partly sponsored by the IBM Corporation. Over the next three months, 1,300 universities from 68 countries will compete in regional contests held around the globe. Of these, 72 teams will be selected to compete at the 2004 World Finals, to be held from March 28-April 1, 2004, in Prague, The Czech Republic.

Computer Science Program Receives Grant from National Science Foundation for Advanced Mathematical Research

Chestertown, MD, August 27, 2001 — Washington College Department of Mathematics and Computer Science has received a $30,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for a collaborative project to develop a library of advanced mathematical programs. The grant is part of $280,000 in funding for a joint research project to be conducted in cooperation with the University of Delaware and North Carolina State University.

"Many researchers feel that if enough computers are unleashed on a task, they will eventually find some sort of an answer," said Austin Lobo, principal investigator and assistant professor of computer science at Washington College. "This project deals with computational tasks that are of such great magnitude, that one cannot simply wait for an answer to come--because that might take a lifetime. By developing programs using probabilistic techniques, we create software that makes intelligent guesses and reduces the time for complex calculating tasks literally from decades to days."

The goal of this project is to provide a component-based, open-source software library of advanced mathematical programs that can be used by other researchers to build and expand other mathematical computing modules. Titled "ITR/ACS: Collaborative Research-LINBOX: A Generic Library for Seminumeric Black Box Linear Algebra," the project will have applications in cryptography, data security, electrical communications, control systems and computer graphics, said Lobo. The Linbox group is composed of members from research institutions in the United States, France, and Canada and has been active for nearly three years.

"We have to prove mathematically before we begin the computations that our programs will finish the work at all and produce an answer despite their 'guesswork,' and that the answer will indeed be correct," said Lobo. "It takes years just to learn the mathematics needed to get to square one in this business."

College Programming Team Vies With The Best in Regional Collegiate Computing Competition

On Nov. 11, 2000, Washington College's first computer programming team competed in the 25th International Collegiate Programming Contest sponsored by the Association of Computer Machinery (ACM) and IBM. Vying with 137 teams from the Mid-Atlantic region, Washington College finished 38th, tying with several schools, including Duke University, University of North Carolina, and University of Delaware.

More than two thousand teams worldwide participated in thirty regional competitions of the ACM's International Collegiate Programming Contest. During the five-hour competition, teams had to design various programs, such as a word processing grammar check and an airplane collision detection system. The contest provides college students with an opportunity to demonstrate and sharpen problem-solving and computing skills in a competitive, time-sensitive environment.

Washington College was represented by seniors Chris Klimas, an English major and computer science minor from Randallstown, Md.; Colleen Hick, a double major in mathematics and computer science from Levittown, Pa.; and Chris Lawrence, a computer science major and president of the Washington College Computer Club from of Narberth, Pa. The team's faculty advisor, Austin Lobo, assistant professor in mathematics and computer science says, "Though this is the first year Washington College has offered a computer science major, our students have emerged as motivated, knowledgeable, and our best and brightest are able to compete with peers from the top schools in the field."

Washington College Announces New Majors

Chestertown, MD, August 9, 2000 — Washington College is pleased to announce the addition of two new major programs of study, anthropology and computer science. Beginning in the fall of 2000, students will be able to choose from these or any of the other 23 majors the College offers.

Washington College will be the only institution of higher learning on the Eastern Shore to offer a major in anthropology and only one of four to do so in the state of Maryland. The major has been established primarily due to student demand. During the past four years, enrollment in anthropology courses has been consistently high. In the past three semesters, course offerings have doubled, yet class size has continued to increase. Seven students have taken the initiative to design independent majors in anthropology by petitioning the Dean of the College. Future majors will complete ten four-credit courses in anthropology, one study abroad experience and a major research paper. The anthropology major directly supports the mission of the College, "to stimulate men and women to think deeply, imaginatively, and creatively about past and present civilizations."

The new major in computer science also promotes the College's mission by providing an additional area of intellectual inquiry in a rapidly growing and evolving field. The current demand for college graduates in computer science and related technical fields far exceeds the supply. "By graduating students in this critical field, many of whom will settle in the Baltimore-Washington area, Washington College is contributing to the economic development of the state of Maryland and to the needs of employers and the work force," said Joachim Scholz, Dean of the College. Students majoring in computer science will be required to complete eleven four-credit courses and either a substantial programming project or an investigation into a topic in theoretical computer science.

In addition to computer science and anthropology, the College has also recently implemented a program leading to certification in elementary education.

Students interested in these or other programs at Washington College should contact the Admissions Office, 1-800-422-1782, or visit the college Web site at www.washcoll.edu.

Distinguished Computer Scientist Helps College Celebrate New Major

Chestertown, MD — Jack Minker, who helped establish the study of computer science at the University of Maryland in 1974, will speak at 4:30 p.m. on Oct. 20 at Washington College. In his talk on the history and development of digital computers through the 1950s, Minker will trace the scientific advances that ledto the development of the modern electronic computer, starting with Euclid and Aristotle and including the surprising influence of the Jacquard Loom for weaving patterns in cloth. He will discuss the controversy over who developed the first digital computer, the influence of founders such as Admiral Grace Hopper and Alan Turing, and the role that computers played in code breaking during World War II. His slide-lecture is free and open to the public.

Minker appears as part of Washington College's celebration of its newly announced major in computer science, previously offered as a minor at the school. Assistant Professor Austin Lobo says, "Washington College is committed to a strong computer science major grounded in a liberal arts tradition that values the historical perspective. Dr. Minker is a recognized expert in computer science as well as an elder statesman in the field. We're proud to have him speak on campus."

Minker is professor emeritus at the University of Maryland College Park in the Department of Computer Science and the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies. He has written more than 160 technical articles for refereed journals, books and conferences and is considered the founder of several fields within the computer science. He is also a tireless worker for human rights.