Students Android App Wins $3,000 in National Competition
Computer science students Michael Cox ’13, Dustin Page ’13, and Albert Cooper ’13 knew little about stock trading and nothing about developing mobile phone applications
when they entered a financial services contest last fall.
They learned fast. The “Open Source Bogey” Android web and phone app they created
was a national finalist and $3,000 winner in online broker-dealer TradeKing’s $100,000
API (Application Programming Interfaces) Campus Challenge. It enables investors to
look up quotes, trade stocks and “tweet” their quotes on Twitter.
“The contest rules were pretty simple: ‘Use the TradeKing system to create something
new for our customers,’” explained Nathan White, assistant professor of computer science,
who also received a $1,000 Professor’s Award. “I enjoyed seeing the students work
through a very unstructured problem.”
“We faced hard deadlines and had to meet specific requirements while making use of
the creative freedom we were given,” Michael said.
The team (one of three McKendree groups that competed in a field of 29) demonstrated
its app during a live web broadcast in February. Other top finalists were students
from Loyola University Maryland; Villanova University; Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute;
and the University of Nebraska (Lincoln).
