ANGELINA DOHRE
Staff Writer
Over 370 students participated in the “Making College Possible Coding Challenge,” but freshman computer science major Kermit Mitchell III was able to make it to the final round.
On March 10, Facebook New York hosted its final judging of the challenge at its New York City office. Mitchell’s group received $2,000 after landing fourth place overall.
The challenge was open to students from all SUNY schools. The motive was for students to create an app or website that could better promote Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Excelsior Scholarship. This scholarship is a first-in-the-nation proposal that would make college tuition-free for working and middle class families in New York.
Mitchell found out about the challenge in an email sent by Computer and Information Systems Department Chair Ziya Arnavut.
“I received an email from the Governor’s office where I was asked to announce it to our students,” Arnavut said. “I simply urged the students to read the email I forwarded to them and asked them to consider to apply.”
Mitchell was unsure at first if he wanted to apply.
“I felt like I wasn’t going to be able to do it, and I said someone else will win it,” he said. “When I started hearing about ideas that other people had, I thought I could do something a bit better.”
Along with Mitchell, the only other member of his team was sophomore electrical construction and maintenance major Justin King from Alfred State College.
“It’s funny because everyone was a developer on the other teams, and he was the only non-computer science major,” he said.
As a result, Mitchell was tasked with being the lead developer of the team.
“I had to develop the app from scratch from front to back, which is the visuals and the functionality,” he said. “My partner focused mostly on getting the PowerPoint together and making new ideas for me to program and to put in the PowerPoint.”
Students had two weeks to come up with the app or website and put it together. According to Mitchell, he and King submitted everything on the last day, putting the app and presentation together within four hours of the deadline.
The app they created was called CampusHive, a social network which consisted of a news feed of information based on a student’s potential major, colleges they’re interested in and scholarship opportunities that match their demographics and interests.
“It’s a social network, so students get to communicate with other people like them, make friends and share resources,” Mitchell said. “We also have a major matcher and scholarship scouter, so students will put in their interests and it’ll use an algorithm that returns a major or scholarship based on their demographics.”
Mitchell explained there are several students out there that apply to college who don’t know what to major in, what college to attend and most likely can’t afford to go. There is an immense amount of information thrown to the students, and this was Mitchell’s motivation behind CampusHive.
“We wanted to figure out how to get that information to the prospective students and help them on their four steps to the college journey: major, college, affording college and being prepared for college,” he said.
After being notified that they were chosen for the semifinals, Mitchell and King and eight other groups were interviewed over the phone.
“The interview was 10 minutes long and it was really to get to know who I was and who my team was,” Mitchell said.
Moving to the final round, the top five groups, including Mitchell’s, left for Manhattan and presented their products at Facebook’s New York City headquarters. There, they were judged and received their awards.
“I feel proud, but I’m still shocked and astonished. I think I should do more competitions,” Mitchell said.
Arnavut said he feels great about Mitchell’s team earning fourth place in this challenge.
“It shows the strength of Fredonia’s Computer and Information Sciences Department and that our students can compete with others,” he said.