Members Dalen Villa, Syed Azfar Rahman, James McMath, James Dempsey, and Kevin Aguilar of the UA Little Rock ACM Student Chapter traveled to Fayetteville to compete in Hog Hacks 2025, a 24-hour hackathon hosted by the ACM Chapter at the University of Arkansas. This semester’s theme was “Yin and Yang” which challenged teams to build an application featuring two contradictory or contrasting functionalities.

Team UA Little Rock ACM took on the challenge with KidKash, a creative twist on family finances. Their project combined a digital storefront with real-time computer vision to give kids veto power over their parents' grocery shopping. The result? A hilarious and clever app where parental purchases must pass a “vibe check” from the kids before checkout. Chocolate milk approved, regular milk denied!

In celebration of March 14th, the UA Little Rock ACM Student Chapter once again hosted its annual Pi Day Game Jam, a two-week game development competition where participants created games inspired by the theme of Pi or Pie, for the more dessert-inclined. The winning submission can be found here.

The UA Little Rock ACM Student Chapter was featured in the updates column of the ACM’s Winter 2022 Crossroads(XRDS) Magazine. The article highlights recent activities of the chapter, including a deep dive into our tech drive event and the impacts it has had on our community. In addition to this, the article briefly discusses our participation in the 2021 GMTK Game Jam and our Mock Interview event we hosted in the Fall 2021 semester. If you would like to read the article you can find it here.

Members Julia Green, John Clements, Samuel Thomas, and Jennifer Arthur of the UA Little Rock ACM Student Chapter recently participated in JOLT 2021, a cyber challenge held in Little Rock at the Venture Center. All weekend, cybersecurity experts provided students from across the state with skill development, networking, and cyber games. Julia Green and John Clements were awarded the Bright Idea award for “stand out individuals.”

On October 16th, 2021 the CS Tech Fest brought families and grade school students from across the state of Arkansas to the University of Arkansas (Little Rock) Department of Engineering and Technology for a day of interactive activities. The UA Little Rock Association for Computing Machinery Chapter assisted the Arkansas Department of Education by presenting at the CS Tech Fest. Brandon Norman, the Vice Chair of our ACM Chapter, gave a brief introduction to emergent behavior through his Boids application. He detailed how emergent behavior plays a role in systems all around us, then went on to show how emergent behaviors can be simulated using a set of simple rules with a simulation of a flock of birds. He engaged both children and their parents in the presentation, and was able to show them how computer science can be used to better understand our everyday lives.

In June, 2021, the UA Little Rock ACM Student Chapter participated in the 2021 GMTK Game Jam. Two of our members, Julia Green and John Clements, designed, built, and deployed an entire multilevel PC game in just 48 hours. Their mind tickling puzzle game called Queso Quest can be found here.

On November 7nd, 2020, 10 members of the ACM Student Chapter of UA Little Rock came together to participate in the 24 hour Extra Life Charity livestream. From noon Saturday to noon on Sunday, members streamed themselves playing video and tabletop games continuously for an online audience to raise money for the Arkansas Children’s Hospital. For most of the event, members streamed individually or in small groups. However, Saturday evening all members came together to play several games as a group.

We received 36 donations in all and surpassed our original goal of $1,000. In total, we managed to raise $1,256 with our highest donation being $600. Overall, the Extra Life Charity Livestream was a success and we are looking forward to participating again in the future.

In the Fall of 2020, the chapter hosted a technology drive in response to the pandemic. During that time, many students were unable to purchase or gain access to reliable computers to participate in their online classes. Thus, we addressed that need by making a call for computer donations from local businesses and nonprofit organizations.

Our call received tremendous support and we were able to collect over 60 functional computers. After receiving, testing, and refurbishing these computers to a usable state, our chapter distributed them to UA Little Rock students for free. Due to the positive overall response from the campus community, we are planning to host another technology drive in the future.

The chapter convened once again in June, 2020 to participate in the annual GMTK Game Jam. This year’s theme was announced to be “Out of Control” and chapter members Gaige Ehrenworth, Julia Green, Samuel Thomas, Joe Filipek, and John Clements quickly got to work. A short 48 hours later, they published their game “The Office Party.” In this game, players must try to maintain control of themselves as they get increasingly drunk at an office party. The game is playable in-browser and can be found here.

Throughout the lifetime of the ACM Student Chapter of UA Little Rock, many members have formed teams to test their programming and computing mettle in various competitions. For two years, teams have been sent to Jolt Cyber Challenge to employ their skills in cryptography, computer forensics, and computer security. For three years, a team from the organization has created a complete video game in 48 hours for the annual GMTK Game Jam. From these experiences, members of the organization were inspired to host a competition of their own.

The Pi Day Game Jam was inspired from experiences like the GMTK and was hosted on Itch.io, a website for hosting the creations of independent game developers. The task of the competition was to create a game in 24 hours following the theme of Pi (or Pie, if you're so inclined). The competition was open to all students on the UA Little Rock campus and to the general public through Itch.io. A total of 7 teams signed up as the date approached for the 2020 Pi Day Game Jam. Unfortunately, the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic began shortly before the launch of the event. In an effort to preserve the competition, the event was transitioned to operate remotely for its participants. Luckily, the 7 teams were still able to participate in the event after this change.

Following the event, a total of 5 submissions made it in, each more unique of an interpretation of the theme than the last. The winner declared was Cecily Mobley and Phillip Bryan with their submission. The competition ended in a success with enjoyment had by participants and organizers alike. While the pandemic caused a change of course in planning, the ACM Student Chapter was able to still host a memorable event for the computer science community at UA Little Rock.

Chapter members Alex Norman, Carlos Ochoa, Julia Green, John Clements, Gaige Ehrenworth, Nick Stewart, and Jennifer Arthur recently competed in the Google Hash Code Competition February 20, 2020. The event was sponsored by the Emerging Analytics Center at the UA Little Rock as well as by the Google Developers Group of Little Rock. Hash Code is a team programming competition that involves thousands of participants around the world from professionals to students. Subsequently, A total of 707 hubs in 89 countries participated. The purpose of the event is to solve a real-live challenge using technology and any programming language. The teams have five hours to complete the task. Google also encourages this type of teamwork and problem solving with its own employees.

On November 2nd, 2019, the ACM Student Chapter of UA Little Rock came together to participate in the 24 hour Extra Life Charity livestream. From noon on Saturday to noon on Sunday, we played video and tabletop games continuously for an online audience to raise money for the Arkansas Children’s Hospital. Of the time spent streaming, a significant portion was dedicated to Dungeons & Dragons. The first session involved the players in a deadly game of Siegeball: an amalgamation of soccer, rugby, and gladiatorial combat. After a short intermission and some more traditional video games, the second session involved the players investigating the mystery of a small hamlet conquered by a monarch 30 years prior.

By morning of the second day, everyone was extremely tired. The streamers, despite taking shifts to sleep for an hour or two in the corner, were still going strong playing their games on stream in hopes of raising money. By noon, everyone said their goodbyes to their online audience and began to pack up to go home for some much deserved rest. Overall, the Extra Life Charity Livestream was a success. The ACM Student Chapter of UA Little Rock looks forward to participating again to raise money for sick children in need.

The Venture Center’s 2019 JOLT Cyber Challenge took place on Sunday for nearly 150 participants in over 35 teams from across the region. The JOLT Cyber Challenge is an expert-designed cybersecurity event that requires hundreds of volunteer hours to produce. Corporate, student, and individual teams participate in order to learn more about cybersecurity and hone their hacking skills. Students from the chapter participated in the event with the chapter sending two teams in total. Team Fork Bomb included John Clements, Denver Ellis, Alex Norman, and Julia Green while was comprised of Team Ramrod was Nick Stewart, Gaige Ehrenworth, Booker Lytle, and Samuel Thomas.

The ACM Student Chapter of UA Little Rock had the opportunity to provide professional development in Microsoft Office for the Arkansas Secretary of State's office. This workshop, divided into five sessions, covered everything from basic functionality of Microsoft Word up to the most advanced features of Microsoft Excel. On the team was Gaige Ehrenworth, the ACM Treasurer, John Clements, the ACM Secretary, and Denver Ellis, the ACM Vice Chair. Together, they worked along side Kerry Moody, the Director of Communications for the Secretary of State Office, to create unique lessons that addressed the specific needs of the workshop students. Ultimately, the Microsoft Office Workshop series was a success leading into possibility of future workshops between the ACM and Secretary of State Office.

The ACM Student Chapter of UA Little Rock had the opportunity to provide professional development in Microsoft Office for the Arkansas Secretary of State's office. This workshop, divided into five sessions, covered everything from basic functionality of Microsoft Word up to the most advanced features of Microsoft Excel. On the team was Gaige Ehrenworth, the ACM Treasurer, John Clements, the ACM Secretary, and Denver Ellis, the ACM Vice Chair. Together, they worked along side Kerry Moody, the Director of Communications for the Secretary of State Office, to create unique lessons that addressed the specific needs of the workshop students. Ultimately, the Microsoft Office Workshop series was a success leading into possibility of future workshops between the ACM and Secretary of State Office.

Chapter members John Clements, Denver Ellis, Verdin-Pol Gaetan, Ethan O’Leske, Nicholas Stewart, and Sam Wills participated in the annual GMTK Game Jam hosted by Itch.io. This year’s theme was: “Only One. Only one life and one person in the room". The team chose the ambitious genre-defying goal of creating a 3-dimensional tower defense game with just one tower. In the limited 48 hour time frame, the team created and published a working game that can be found here.