News Release
6/27/2017
Students’ achievement recognized by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
Aurora, ON – Pierre Elliott Trudeau High School in Markham is the first York Region school to ever win the York University Cup and has been named the top programming team in the country for 2017.
The ECOO programming contest, which takes place in three rounds, was held in May and involved a team consisting of four students and one computer.
The team, comprised of students Jason Yuen, William Wen, Nathan Lo and Kevin Pan, was coached and supervised by teacher Jordan Cohen. The student team was asked to solve four complex programming problems in less than three hours.
On June 28, a celebration was held at Pierre Trudeau High School and the students were presented with letters from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau congratulating them on their success.
“Your success is not only a reflection of your hard work and programming skill, but is also an illustrative of your dedication to team work,” said Prime Minister Trudeau in his letters to the students. “It is truly inspiring to see what can be achieved when a group of talented young people come together and collaborate on a common passion.”
“Our students from Pierre Elliott Trudeau High School demonstrated exceptional teamwork and programming skills to win the York University Cup,” said Kathryn Wallace, Interim Director of Education. “Congratulations to our students and staff for their outstanding achievement.”
The ECOO programming competition has been taking place since 1984 and bring together Ontario’s top secondary school computer science programming teams.
In addition to participating in the ECOO content, students also participated in the Canadian Computing Olympiad (CCO), which are the computer programming “Finals” in Canada where students compete individually. The Pierre Elliott Trudeau High School team members did exceptionally well, including a first place finish for Jason Yuen. Jason will be moving on to the International Olympiad for Informatics, IOI, which will be held this summer in Iran.
From left to right: William Wen, Jason Yuen, Nathan Lo and Kevin Pan.
York Region District School Board is the third largest school district in Ontario with over 123,000 students in 176 elementary schools and 32 secondary schools. York Region students consistently perform above average in provincial testing and the Board is one of the top achievers in Ontario. For more information about the York Region District School Board, please visit the Board website and follow @YRDSB on Twitter.
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