COLLEGE STUDENTS COMPETE IN TEST OF COMPUTER SKILLS.

Byline: Blanca E. Cordova Daily News Staff Writer

More than 100 students from Southern California and southern Nevada used computers to solve problems Saturday in the Association for Computing Machinery International Collegiate Programming regional contest at CSUN.

``The problems are really challenging,'' said coach Robert Dependahl Jr. of Santa Barbara City College. ``But solving even one is a real accomplishment.''

The goal of the project was to get more students interested in the computer science field, said John Crowe, spokesman for IBM, sponsor of the event.

The contestants were in groups of three and were given a set of six problems they had to solve in a given period of five hours. The contestants relied only on their programming skills, creativity and teamwork.

Henry Liao, the coach of students from California State University, Long Beach, and a former contestant, knew what it was like to participate in the competition.

``It's pretty stressful,'' he said.

When all the points were counted, Harvey Mudd College team No. 1 won the competition by solving five of six problems, said Adam Ravid, a CSUN graduate who volunteered at the event.

California Institute of Technology team No. 2 placed second out of 42 teams, he said.

Third place was taken by the UCLA Blue team and Caltech's team No. 1 took fourth place. University of California, Irvine, was in fifth place and another Harvey Mudd group, team No. 2, was in sixth place, Ravid said.

Two CSUN teams were among 25 schools that didn't solve any problems, he said.

Placement in the contest was determined by problems solved, speed and the number of mistakes made in the process, he said.

Finals are scheduled to be held in Atlanta on Feb. 27 and 28.

Marc Furon, director of the Southern California Regional ACM contest, said the top 150 students from around the world will compete at the event.