LINGUIST List 18.2731: North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad

LINGUIST List 18.2731

Thu Sep 20 2007

FYI: North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad

Editor for this issue: Fatemeh Abdollahi <fatemehlinguistlist.org>

Directory 1. Thomas Payne, North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad

Message 1: North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad
Date: 18-Sep-2007
From: Thomas Payne <tpayneuoregon.edu>
Subject: North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad
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The second annual North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad(NACLO) will take place in February and March of 2008.

Earlier this year, 195 high school students from around the USAparticipated in the first NACLO competition. Eight of the topwinners went on to compete at the International Linguistics Olympiad in St.Petersburg, Russia, and came home with several awards, as well as many fondmemories (see www.namclo.org). In the coming year, NACLO winnerswill be eligible for the International Linguistics Olympiad to be held inthe Summer of 2008 in Bulgaria.

The success of any Linguistics Olympiad program such as NACLOdepends on the collaborative efforts of many in the linguistics andcomputational linguistics communities throughout the world. At this pointyou can participate by:

1. Hosting a ''site'' for the North American Open competition in February.2. Serving on a NACLO committee.3. Creating problems, or ideas and data for problems to be used in futureOlympiads.

Hosting a site involves inviting high school students from your area toyour university on a given day in February and/or March (exact dates to bedetermined). Your students and faculty will then administer the contest fortwo to four hours, and then forward the high-school students' solutions tothe judges for scoring.

We earnestly invite linguists from around the world to serve on aNACLO committee. Committees in need of members at this point are:

Program: Creating, evaluating and scoring problems used for publicity,practice and the actual competition for 2008.Publicity: Creating flyers, writing and distributing press releases andother publicity materials.Development: Identifying and approaching potential funding sources.Follow up: Obtaining and distributing prizes and certificates, evaluatingthe program and organizing mentoring programs, summer schools, and summerinternships.ILO team: Making travel arrangements, researching legal issues,corresponding with competitors and families, conducting coaching sessions,and traveling with the team to Bulgaria in the Summer of 2008.

Challenging and engaging linguistics and computational linguistics problemsare the centerpiece of any Linguistic Olympiad program. Guidelines forproblem creation can be found athttp://www.uoregon.edu/~tpayne/ProblemCreation.pdf.

Please contact us if you have any questions or ideas for problems.

Thank you very much for your help in raising the profile of our disciplineamong secondary school students. Please contact any of the executive teammembers below if you have any questions or would like to participate in 2008.

Local contests or general volunteering:

Lori Levin (General co-chair 2007-2008) lslumich.edu

Linguistic Field(s): Computational Linguistics; General Linguistics