Submitted Photo From left to right, Minot State University computer science students Saliou Diallo and Brandon Alvino, instructor Scott Kast, and students Hayk Margaryan and Dennis Urhmacher. The four students on the team won the Digi-Key Electronics Competition in Thief River Falls, Minn., last month. It was the first time in eight years of competition that a team from MSU made it to the podium.

A computer science team from Minot State University made it to the awards podium for the first time ever when they won the Digi-Key Electronics Competition in Thief River Falls, Minn., last month.

Students Saliou Diallo, Brandon Alvino, Hayk Margaryan and Dennis Uhrmacher, students of Scott Kast, competed against 23 teams from 13 institutions in North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin. This was the first time in eight years of competing that MSU took first place.

One of the best parts of the competition is the opportunity for students to tour the Digi-Key facility and to meet people who work at the facility.

“It is a way for Digi-Key to get students to their facility to take a look at their company,” said Kast. “Digi-Key also gets to see the level of the students by how they do in the competition. We currently have five graduates working at Digi-Key.”

The four students said that DigiKey posts questions from previous competitions on its website, which they went over together the night before the competition on Oct. 21.

The competition consists of three parts: short programming problems, long programming problems and word problems.

The students said they took part of the test using pencil and paper and used a computer to do the short programming and long programming problems.

Students have 90 minutes to complete as many short programming problems as they can.

Long programming problems are even tougher, said Kast.

“It is very tough to get even one of these problems done,” Kast said. “Many times I give these types of problems to my students in class and give them one week to complete (the problem).”

The four team members said it was a great experience and the prizes were pretty great too. Each member of the team won a $300 gift card from Amazon.com and Minot State received $5,000 in cash.

Minnesota State University-Moorhead had the second place team and a team from Bemidji State University in Minnesota received third place.

The University of North Dakota at Grand Forks and North Dakota State University in Fargo also sent teams this year.