Computer Science Involvement

Simpson has an active Computer Club that meets regularly and is open to all students, whether you are a computer-science major or not. Club activities include the following:

Computer-building - The Computer Club regularly hosts a Computer Building Workshop to assemble computers and help students learn the basics through hands-on experience. Students typically work together to build computers while eating pizza. The computers they build are available for use in the computer lab.

Robotics - Students have also enjoyed activities like flying a remote-controlled fish around the Carver Science Center, building a giant programmable Tetris board and using LEGO Minsdstorm robots to navigate around obstacles, shoot basketballs and fight "robot-wars."

Hackathons - Simpson students have participated and won prizes in hackathons around the country (including Ames, St. Louis and Washington, D.C.). They normally occur over a weekend and require developing an innovative piece of hardware or software to address an important social issue.

Two great opportunities for student involvement are annual programming contests. The first is in the Spring semester and is hosted by the Midwest Instruction and Computing Symposium (MICS). Every year, about 60 teams from mostly small Midwest colleges and universities participate in this contest. It's fun, challenging and competitive. Simpson is one of the strongest colleges at MICS, finishing first in 2016 and 2019 and second in 2012 and 2018 in the programming contest.

The second programming contest is the ICPC (International Collegiate Programming Contest) in the Fall semester. This is an international contest with multiple elimination rounds in different regions across the world. Simpson competes in the North Central Region, which includes two provinces of Canada as well as Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas. In 2018 the three highest place teams from liberal arts colleges in Iowa were all from Simpson, finishing ahead of teams from Buena Vista, Coe, Graceland, Luther, Central and others.

These outstanding results show the value of a computer science education at Simpson. Programming contests are a great opportunity to improve programming skills, to have fun with teammates, and to meet students at other institutions.