Rapid City, S.D. (May 20, 2014) – The inaugural Butterfield Cup for Excellence in Software Engineering was held on May 5. Seven three-person teams from the software engineering class participated in the competition. The team of Joseph Lillo, Daniel Nix and Lisa Woody, working under the “company” name of “The A+ Team” won the competition. Students vying for the cup were required to participate in a simulation of a business competition in which the winning team would receive startup funding from business investors.
The Butterfield Cup was named to honor the significant contributions of Brian Butterfield, Innovative Systems, to software engineering, senior design and the professional development of students in the computer science department. “The pursuit for the cup embodies all of the characteristics employers or investors strive to uncover in software developers. Innovation, teamwork, leadership, pride in their work, attention to detail and the ability to communicate are just a few of those characteristics,” Butterfield said.
Each “company” wrote a software testing system, made a business presentation to sell the product to the panel of investors and did a technical presentation to convince the panel that not only the product, but the team, was worthy of investment. Judges Butterfield, David Springhetti, and Sung Kang, all from Innovative Systems, along with Antonette Logar, Ph.D., mathematics and computer science professor, evaluated the companies, presentations and software.
The Butterfield Cup is part of an effort to increase awareness of entrepreneurship as a career path for software engineers at Mines, an effort started and encouraged by Roger Musick, CEO of Innovative Systems.
Winning team member Lisa Woody said, “We were so grateful and excited to be named the recipients of the first annual Butterfield cup! We feel that we owe this achievement to our excellent instructors, Dr. Logar, whose unique teaching style never fails to engage each of her students, and Brian Butterfield, whose business experience bridged the gap between classroom material and industry application. We would like to thank both for their exceptional commitment to the success of their students.”
The trophy will be on display in the computer science department and will be inscribed with the names of the winning team members each year.
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About SDSM&T
Founded in 1885, the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology is a science and engineering research university located in Rapid City, S.D., offering bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees. The university enrolls 2,640 students from 45 states and 37 countries, with a student-to-faculty ratio of 14:1. The average starting salary for graduates is $62,400 with a 98 percent placement rate. Find us online at www.sdsmt.edu, on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/sdsmt and on Twitter at https://twitter.com/sdsmt