Computer science olympiad: exploring computer science through competition

Generating interest in specialized areas of Computer Science (CS) is one of the goals of the department of Computer and Information Science at Spelman College as with most departments. Achieving this goal in a new, exciting, and innovative manner provided the inspiration to establish the Spelman College Computer Science Olympiad (SC CS Olympiad). The SC CS Olympiad is patterned after the Olympics athletic event. Students participate in the Olympiad as a part of a team as with the Olympics. In addition, there are several events for competition as there are in the Olympics. The events are designed to expose students to the interesting breadth of CS over several days. In this paper, the events are in the following categories: Cryptography, Robotics, Website Design, Hardware and Software Integration, and Programming. Teams use their CS knowledge and problem-solving skills to complete hands-on exercises in each area. Each teams receives points based on the quality of their results from the exercise. In this paper, we present the implementation, results, and future directions of the Spelman College Computer Science Olympiad.