Students from Coastal Carolina University's Department of Computer Science placed in the Top 30 out of 77 Southeastern college and university teams competing in the annual Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) International Collegiate Programming Contest, sponsored by IBM. The event was held at Georgia College and State University in Milledgeville, Sept. 29 and 30.

Coastal computer science majors who participated in the event were: Barry Donohue of Murrells Inlet, Ryan Karetas of Myrtle Beach, Mike Pilecki of Conway, Michael Wisener of Myrtle Beach, John Wu of Myrtle Beach and Marcus Wu of Myrtle Beach.

"We were excited to be a part of such a prestigious programming competition," said Abdallah Haddad, director of Coastal's Academic Center and Coastal's team coach for the event. Haddad also is a part- time instructor of computer science. "Coastal's two teams took the 29th and 30th spots out of 77 teams. Even better, Coastal's teams ranked eighth and ninth within their division (universities without a computer science graduate program). We are proud of our students for this accomplishment, which reflects the growth and progress of Coastal's Department of Computer Science. We look forward to higher rankings in the future."

Other schools which participated in the competition include Auburn University, University of Central Florida, Clemson University, Georgia Tech, Florida State University and the University of South Carolina. Coastal participated in the competition for the first time last year.