Student research honored by KCP&L
NORTHWEST MISSOURI STATE UNIVERSITY PHOTO
Northwest Missouri State University students Caroline Pickett and Tiffany McBride, front row from left, and Matt Woolery, Hunter Hawthorne, Caleb Bertels, and Jamie Ford, back row from left, recently received cash prizes for presenting papers during Kansas City Power & Light’s ninth annual computer science and information systems research competition.
MARYVILLE, Mo. — Six Northwest Missouri State University students, including two from Maryville, recently won cash prizes during the ninth annual computer science and information systems research paper competition sponsored by Kansas City Power & Light Co.
Jamie Ford, a senior computer science major from Rosendale, earned first place and $360 for his presentation “Microservices Architecture,” which explored how Netflix, Amazon, and other content delivery networks use a series of small applications to serve customers.
“It was very apparent that Jamie had gone in and done a lot of research, including the fact that he also had an internship that helped him,” said KCP&L’s Yuvonise Thurmond, who led the judging panel. “So he was exposed to a lot of the information that he presented to us. He was able to field the questions and presented very good in-depth information.”
Each year, contest finalists are selected by faculty members from Northwest’s School of Computer Science and Information Systems, who conduct a blind review of student papers related to software engineering principles and systems analysis and design.
During the final round, a panel of KCP&L employees judges the students’ presentation of their research along with their topic knowledge and ability to respond to questions.
“I knew since I wasn’t just presenting for a class, and I wasn’t doing this for a grade, I was actually doing it for an opportunity to get in front of people and present my ideas and my research,” Ford said. “It made me ratchet up my skill level and presentation quality.
“I spent another three or four hours editing this than I would a traditional paper. It was just a really good opportunity to get more practice speaking in front of people.”
Second place went to Tiffany McBride, a senior management information systems major from Millstadt, Illinois, who received $240 for her presentation, “Software Testing Methodologies.”
Caleb Bertels, a senior computer science major from Laddonia, received third place and $160 for his presentation, “Self-writing Software.”
The judges also handed out honorable mentions and $80 each to Hunter Hawthorne, a junior computer science major from Maryville, for his presentation, “Ethics and Morality of A.I.”; Caroline Pickett, a junior computer science major from Omaha, Nebraska, for her presentation, “Green Computing in SE”; and Matt Woolery, a senior computer science major from Maryville, for his presentation, “Big Data: BI.”
This year’s KCP&L judging panel included two Northwest alumni: Thurmond, supervisor of KCP&L’s outage management system, and Jory Galloway, a web application programmer.
“Today was, in the last eight years I think, probably the most diverse set of topics that we’ve had the opportunity to judge,” Thurmond said. “They were all very good, and it’s always very challenging as we deliberate about placement for the contest.”
Northwest Provost Timothy Mottet thanked KCP&L for its continued involvement.
“A student’s journey has a lot of different turning points, and what we’re trying to build into the curriculum at Northwest Missouri State is to have more of our corporate and our organizational partners be part of those students’ turning points in their careers,” Mottet said.
