The ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) traces its roots to a competition held at Texas A&M in 1970 hosted by the Alpha Chapter of the UPE Computer Science Honor Society. The idea quickly gained popularity within the United States and Canada as an innovative initiative to assist in the development of top students in the emerging field of computer science.

The contest evolved into a multi-tier competition with the first Finals held at the ACM Computer Science Conference in 1977. Headquartered at Baylor University since the 1980s, the contest has expanded into a global network of universities hosting regional competitions that advance teams to the World Finals.

Since IBM began its sponsorship of the ACM-ICPC World Finals in 1997, the contest has increased by a factor of 7.5. Participation has grown to involve several tens of thousands of the finest students and faculty in computing disciplines at 1,756 universities from 82 countries on six continents.

The contest fosters creativity, teamwork, and innovation in building new software programs, and enables students to test their ability to perform under pressure. Quite simply, it is the oldest, largest, and most prestigious programming contest in the world.

Levels of Competition:
Universities choose teams or hold local contests to select one or more teams to represent them at the next level of competition. This selection is culled from a field of more than 300,000 students in computing disciplines worldwide. Regional contests were held September to December 2006. Participation in preliminary and regional contests increased by 10 percent from 5,606 to 6,099 teams, as compared to 2005.

ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery ,is an educational and scientific society uniting the world's computing educators, researchers and professionals to inspire dialogue, share resources and address the field's challenges. ACM strengthens the profession's collective voice through strong leadership, promotion of the highest standards, and recognition of technical excellence. ACM supports the professional growth of its members by providing opportunities for life-long learning, career development, and professional networking.

IBM's sponsorship of the ACM-ICPC is an important component of the company's many academic initiatives, designed to stimulate open-source programming skills to develop a more competitive IT workforce capable of driving global innovation and economic growth.

For more information about other IBM college initiatives, please visit the IBM/ACM at here.