Southeastern computer science teams benefit from Geocent partnership
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
by: Rene Abadie
HAMMOND – Southeastern Louisiana University plans to continue assembling championship caliber and highly competitive computer science student teams with the help of a sponsorship from Geocent, a leading software and technology company headquartered in Metairie.
Sebastian van Delden, head of the Department of Computer Science and Industrial Technology, said Geocent President Rick Gremillion indicated his commitment to be the team's sole sponsor, committing $5,000 annually to assist in preparing for and traveling to additional competitions.
Last spring, Southeastern entered five teams in the Deloitte Consulting Programming Competition held at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg. Southeastern's top team, the Void Avengers, took the championship with its other teams placing fifth, eighth, ninth and 17th. The competition involved teams from eight universities from Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama and included such teams as LSU, Tulane, the University of Southern Mississippi and the University of South Alabama.
"With the growth that Geocent is continuing to experience and our commitment to supporting the communities we serve, partnering with Southeastern's computer science program to support their programming team is a win-win situation," Gremillion said. "This unique program will foster top-notch software engineering talent that will experience competition that rewards hard work and success. Geocent will fill more of its jobs with these high performers and allow local students to work for a growing Louisiana technology company that performs exciting work. We are honored that the Southeastern programming team will be 'Powered by Geocent.'"
In addition to Metairie, Geocent also maintains offices in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, the Stennis Space Center in Mississsippi, Huntsville, Ala., Charleston, S.C., and Tulsa, Okla.
van Delden said Geocent has been a valuable partner with Southeastern in recent years, providing educational and internship opportunities for students, resulting in the company hiring multiple program graduates.
"Thanks to Geocent's support, we will be able to implement a sustainable comprehensive programming team initiative that includes monthly meetings and competitions, internal programming competitions, a regional high school competition and competition in at least one external regional or national competition each year," said Assistant Professor John Burris and team coach.
