Competitive Programming

Do you love to solve challenging problems? Would you like to increase your programming skills? Are you a competitive person? Do you want to prepare for interview exercises that companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, and others give their future employees? Would you like to improve your ability to work in teams? If you answered “YES!” to any of these questions, then we have the perfect club for you! We solve programming problems in online and in-person team competitions. We meet weekly for practices and participate in several contests every year.

Cyber Defense

The Cyber Defense club is a student-led group focused on learning about information security techniques and tools, and participates in cyber defense competitions such as CCDC, NCL, and NSA Codebreaker. Members can expect to learn about tools and techniques used in cyber defense and penetration testing through weekly demos and exercises as well as current information security news and trends.

DukeDevs

  • Faculty contact: Isaac Wang (wangid)
  • Student contact: Leo Torrijos (torrijld) and Diego Navia Sejas (naviasda)
  • Weekly meetings: Tuesdays, 6-7 PM in King 148

We aim to create a friendly environment for students to learn and discuss everything about game development! In addition to programming, we also look into art, music, design, etc. All majors are welcome!

If you can't make it to regular meetings, we hold events (workshops, gamejams, etc.) throughout the year! You can also hang out and chat on our Discord!

PlayMU

PlayMU is an organization with the sole intent of bringing in video gamers of all backgrounds, genre preferences, and platforms together in a social environment. Our primary focus is building community. We want to be a place where you can have a conversation with anyone about whatever game you're playing, and find someone who shares your opinions. Feel free to contact any officers through Discord if you have any questions!

Robotics

  • Faculty contact: Nathan Sprague (spragunr)
  • Student contact: Tyler Rabatin
  • Weekly meetings: Tuesdays 5:00-6:00PM, EngGeo 1203

The Robotics club enables students who wish to either continue robotics work outside of class or to start with their robotics work.

UUG (Unix Users Group)

UUG is an organization for computer enthusiasts, and users of Unix-like operating systems such as Linux and macOS. Meetings are typically Wednesday nights, with an InstallFest to kick off each semester. Fall semester meeetings focus on Linux development tools and processes, and Spring semester meetings focus more on Linux internals and contemporary topics in the open source community.

UPE (Upsilon Pi Epsilon)

  • Faculty contact: Mike Lam (lam2mo)
  • Student contact: Will Morris
  • (no regular meetings)

Upsilon Pi Epsilon was founded in 1967 at Texas A&M University and is the first honor society for Computer Science. There are now over 100 chapters of UPE throughout the world. The mission of Upsilon Pi Epsilon is to recognize academic excellence at both the undergraduate and graduate levels in the computing sciences. UPE also encourages academic achievement by providing scholarships to outstanding students in computer science.

WIT (Women in Technology)

  • Contact: jmuwit@gmail.com
  • Faculty contact: Dr. Zhuojun Duan (duanzx)
  • Student contact: Kritika Jatin Shah
  • meetings are bi-weekly at 6:30 in King 348 (Sep 6, Sep. 20, Oct. 4, Oct. 25, Nov. 6, Nov. 29, Dec. 6)

WIT's goal is to celebrate an active network of women in the technology industries by facilitating career development and empowering women to be the architects of change in the STEM field, and to create opportunities for personal and professional development inside and outside of the classroom.

If you would like to get involved with WIT, please email us at jmuwit@gmail.com so we can add you to our mailing list!

Not Currently Active

ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) / Coders Anonymous

ACM brings together computing educators, researchers, and professionals to inspire dialogue, share resources, and address the field's challenges. As the world’s largest computing society, ACM strengthens the profession's collective voice through strong leadership, promotion of the highest standards, and recognition of technical excellence. ACM supports the professional growth of its members by providing opportunities for life‐long learning, career development, and professional networking.

Minority Programmers Association

The Minority Programmers Association was started in 2019 at JMU by a group of diverse Computer Science / Computer Information Systems students looking to start a community where minorities are both accepted and have the opportunity to produce projects as undergrads. Join MPA (the newest CS org) if you want to develop coding solutions with minorities tackling problems affecting underprivileged communities, join an organization at JMU that develops impactful technical projects, and educate local/diverse communities through programming.

Forensics

  • Faculty contact: Florian Buchholz (buchhofp)
  • Student contact: TBD
  • Weekly meetings: TBD

The Forensics club is for those interested in learning the basics of forensics as well as discussing current developments in the field. We engage in many forensics exercises like drive recovery and forensics scenarios. In the past, members of the group have given presentations on forensic topics and tools, recovered data from “broken” hard drives, participated in DFRWS and HoneyNet forensics challenges, and examined and developed forensic tools. We have even assisted the JMU Police Department with some of their forensics needs. The Forensics Club gives members insight into what a career in cyber forensics could be like by solving real-world forensics problems.