One such assignment took him to Romania, shortly after the fall of the communist government there. This week he's in the Netherlands for the international finals, and on April 23 he'll be helping with a special contest at CSUS for area high school students. Joining Clevenger at this week's finals is student Troy Boudreau and former students Doug Lane and Sam Ashoo. They're running the latest version of their scoring software, known as PC-Squared, which is based on a prototype written in Java by recent master's degree recipient Tammy Torok. The finals feature 62 three-person teams, culled from 1,457 that competed in various regional contests.
Top performers earn bragging rights among their peers.
They win thousands of dollars worth of the latest high-tech software and hardware. At all levels of the annual competition, speed is the key. As teams work on four to eight programs, every minute is one more point and, like golf, the goal is to score low. Accuracy also counts. Twenty points stack against a team if they submit a program that doesn't work.