By JORDAN McLEMORE, Staff Reporter
This semester, the computer science department has a number of changes coming, including an expansion of the department and improvements to the robotics club.
“We will be converting Shockley Hall room 116 over the course of this next semester into a specialized computer and robotics lab, to be able to start making some classes in the spring,” said Dr. Tim Maharry, professor of mathematics and chair of the mathematics and computer science department. “This is through two generous donations totaling $125, 000,”
The numbers for the department are up, which means that professors have had to start to increasing the number of positions available for students in beginning level classes, and the department has had to add additional sessions next semester to handle the growing numbers.
“There is a lot of growth and new opportunities through donors making generous contributions to allow us to build specialize labs for, computer science in general, game programing and robotic designs,” said Mark Bagley, instructor of computer science.
The department has also been attending a state wide contest at the University of Tulsa each year for the past three years.
Last year, one of the students, Bruno Miguel, won the overall contest, and others have won in the specialty categories.
They are already preparing for next spring’s contest. The game programing team is composed of freshmen through senior level students along with some students from the music department and mass communication department.
“We are happy to see that our efforts are being noticed,” Miguel said. “We had worked really hard last semester to be highly awarded at the Tulsa Heartlands expo, and to know that people see our potential is very gratifying.”
“The donations and upcoming upgrades will take us to another level, not only that, it will help us to create outstanding concepts for the upcoming competitions,” Miguel said. “It also opens doors for us to learn and study even more about the latest technologies, and to get ready for the market. I’m proud to be a part of this team.”
Currently the program is in the process of adding a gaming program minor, and in the meantime, there have been some game programing classes being added for the past few semesters now.
“We have students that compete in team based gameplay against other schools across the nation,” said Evan Vaverka, instructor of computer science. “League of Legends, Heroes of the Storm and Overwatch are some of the games that the students play.”
“We are working on a schedule against some other bigger schools,” Vaverka said. “In the end, the companies that own these games will have some form of major tournament that only college level students can compete in, and the top teams that win will get a scholarship or a computer.”
If there is anyone that would like to know more about the gaming program or anyone who likes to play video games, contact Evan Vaverka, in Shockley Hall room 213 or contact him at epvaverka@nwosu.edu