The Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) is a campus organization that does anything from building computers to flying quad-copters.

Meetings are every week on Tuesday at 11AM, and involve a wide variety of activities.

Dane Miller, next year’s ACM president said, “I really enjoy our meetings, we always have something exciting to do.”

Recently, ACM held a robot wars competition, where the students were tasked with the objective of helping to build a large quad-copter, while other students pieced together pre-bought less intricate quad-copters for later competition.

This competition took place in the bottom of the Chess Center on Saturday, April 11th at 6PM.

Members were then encouraged to test flight their newly build quad-copters.

Veteran member, and current vice president, Scott McDermott said, “I assist the president with club activities.”

McDermott then goes on to discusses his role in helping to orchestrate robot wars.

“We set up PVC tubes to fly the quad-copters through,” said Miller.

Miller explains that the goal of ACM is to promote thoughtful electronics and computer based engineering projects for the students involved.

 Jay Staffstall, Factulity director of ACM for the past 11 years, explained how over the last decade the direction of ACM has changed.

“Over the years students have shifted from more programming aspects, to activities like building quad-copters.”

ACM regularly receives funding from student senate, but usually not for larger, more expensive technology items.

Dane Miller and Scott McDermott both expressed their excitement about receiving funding from student senate for the quad-copters.

Miller explained that once their newest drone was complete, the camera accessory would allow them to hover the drone above the quad, or any location on campus and take pictures of either students or campus events.

Miller said, “I really believe that this will encourage more students to join ACM, once they see all the cool things we do.”

Jay Staffstall also mirrored this discussion, talking about the camera on the quad-coper and its endless possibilities.

Staffstall also explained the programming competition that some of ACM’s members attend.

Muskingum University hosts some of these competations, while others are held in Youngstown, Ohio.

The Youngstown regional competition, hosted by national ACM, selects what teams go onto the world contest.

“And this is a big deal,” says Staffstall.

Students spend the night in Youngstown and then spend all day Saturday doing nothing but solving program contest problems.

The competitions are not only limited to computer science majors, as Staffstall mentioned but to math majors as well. They enjoy the competitions for the rigorous math involved before the programming even starts.

In fact, many students have joined ACM while not directly being in a major related course.

McDermott explained how many of the members have become great friends while building things like their arcade machine.