Date: June 11, 2008
Contact: Sally Credille, src0007@auburn.edu, 334-844-3447

CSSE ACS STARS club brings home UAB film festival prizes

Wrights Mill Road Elementary School students Brandon Williford and Caldwell Wagenheim with their first place award for "The Land of Wonders"

Students from Auburn University and Auburn City Schools (ACS) competed at the University of Alabama at Birmingham's (UAB) Alice Film Festival and Programming Contest on Saturday, May 10. The team of eight fifth graders was accompanied by Auburn faculty member Cheryl Seals, professor of computer science and software engineering and academic liaison for the AU CSSE Students and Technology Academia, Research and Service (STARS) Student Leadership Corps (SLC), and Ramona Lindsey, Cary Woods Elementary School faculty member and technology coordinator for ACS.

Program volunteers conducted the six-week Alice Programming Club at five Auburn elementary schools with 125 students. The top three winners from each school were selected to travel to the annual competition in Birmingham.

In the elementary team category, Wrights Mill Road Elementary School students Brandon Williford and Caldwell Wagenheim's entry,"The Land of Wonders," won first place. ACS won second place in the elementary individual competition with Yarbrough Elementary School student Fisher Conanan's "Pyro Penguin" entry. Honorable mentions included fifth place for Cary Woods Elementary student John Oriole and eighth place to Brandon Williford of Wrights Mill Road Elementary School.

STARS student leaders for the 2007-2008 scholastic year are Andrea Williams, Brandon Buskey, Cheryl Swanier, Christin Hamilton, Delane Abight, Derrick Mendez, Dwight McCants, Joe Davis, Jonathan Lartigue, Ken Rouse, Priyanka Gupta, Ravikant Agarwal, Vasavi Chilimantula, Wanda Eugene and Yun Tian.

Auburn University faculty partners include Juan Gilbert, Richard Chapman and W. Homer Carlisle. Auburn City Schools faculty partners are Julie Price of Yarbrough Elementary School, Marsha Pace of Dean Road Elementary School, Lori Grubbs of Wrights Mill Road Elementary School and Sandy Little of Ogletree Elementary School.

The UAB Alice Film Festival provides an opportunity for Alabama K-12 students to create video games and animated movies using Alice, an interactive 3D-programming environment from Carnegie-Mellon University, and submit them for competition. CSSE STARS Computer Club is sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Broadening Participation in Computing STARS Alliance. This partnership between AU CSSE and ACS has led to the successful AU STARS SLC program. It provides leadership activities for AU students and opportunities to utilize their programming talents for teaching introductory and visual programming to K-12 students. 

For additional information about the STARS program, please visit  http://www.eng.auburn.edu/stars/index.html.