College of the Ozark students senior Brian Hofmann, junior Tanner Maasen, sophomore Josiah Falukos, and freshman Ulpiana Bokshi received first place in the beginner category at the TigerHacks programming competition.

POINT LOOKOUT, MO. — The College of the Ozarks Data Structures Class and the ACM Club (Association for Computing Machinery) took 21 students to compete in a 36-hour programming competition called TigerHacks at the University of Missouri in Columbia from Nov. 8 – 10.  

“It was an amazing experience to work with all the brilliant students from College of the Ozarks and solve modern problems with programming,” said Joel Johnson, junior business major. “Our groups competed, but they also collaborated and worked together to solve complex problems. Overall it was a fantastic experience with real-world application.”

Caleb Berkstresser, assistant professor of computer science, and Sarah Hayden, business office staff accountant, served as sponsors for this year’s event.

There were six C of O teams. Five teams submitted a project and four of those teams placed:

First place in Audio Category: Creators included May 2019 graduates Josh Dowd and Miles Mrowiec, senior Christian Slater, and juniors Joel Johnson and Jason Millsap.  

First place in Beginner Category: Creators included senior Brian Hofmann, junior Tanner Maasen, sophomore Josiah Falukos, and freshman Ulpiana Bokshi.

Third place in Developer Category: Creators included May 2019 graduates James Allison, Caleb Goze, and Steven Hayden.

Best Logo and Best Use of UIPath (a robotic process automation tool): Creators included senior Gabriela Urbano, juniors Nathan Dyuran, Ben Sipe, Nathan McCloskey, and sophomore Ethan Hutchison.

Additional trip participants included the following students: juniors Matthew Craig, Caleb Stucky, Luke Sharon, Ashton Collins, Noah Rejda, Nolan Perez, Cameron McGeorge, and sophomores Ethan Murphy and Alex Klepko.

“The computer science department is thrilled with our students’ success at TigerHacks and are excited about seeing them acknowledged for their efforts,” said Hayden.

More about TigerHacks

TigerHacks is a weekend college hackathon, hosted every year at the University of Missouri, Columbia. Hackathons provide a venue for self-expression and creativity through technology. At TigerHacks, attendees have 36 hours to develop a variety of technical projects ranging from virtual reality simulations to mobile apps.