The First Annual Integration Bee was held on Thursday, March 22nd, at 8 PM in room 343 of the Masonic Temple. In this event, 32 Pitt undergrad students competed for $200 of Pitt Bookstore gift certificates, donated by the University of Pittsburgh Honors College. Their efforts were cheered by a crowd estimated at over 100 students (grad and undergrad), faculty, and parents.

The Bee was organized by Carson Chow, Jon Rubin and Bill Troy. Chow served as MC for the evening, while Rubin took charge of assigning problems to be solved and judged the results. Grad student Stephanie Hoogendoorn kept time, and several other grad students helped to organize participants and to keep things running smoothly.

Participants drew random numbers to determine a participation order. To start the Bee, the first participant walked to a large table at the front of the room and was presented with an integral, which he was required to evaluate within 2 minutes. His written work was projected to a large screen visible to the audience, using a Prof-Cam provided by the Pitt CIDDE (Center for Instructional Development &Distance Education). Paper was provided so that other participants and audience members could simultaneously attempt to work the problem. Once the participant committed to a final answer (or time expired, whichever came first), this was judged - a correct answer gave passage to the next round, while an incorrect answer led to elimination (with a consolation Certificate of Participation). Subsequent participant were assigned integrals as follows. If an integral was correctly evaluated, then the next participant started with a fresh integral. If an integral was incorrectly evaluated on a first attempt, then the next participant was given the same integral, but with only one minute for evaluation. With a second failure, the same integral would go to a third student, who only had 30 seconds to evaluate it. The lone partial fraction integral in the first round knocked out 3 participants, and after one round we had about 20 students left.

The second round proceeded the same as the first, but with harder integrals. The only other component to mention for both of these rounds was that each participant was allowed one "lifeline". That is, one time during the competition, each competitor could stop the clock and select an audience member to come join him/her for a 30 second consultation (during which no writing was allowed). While participants were encouraged to arrange for lifelines ahead of time, many did not, which added excitement as audience members sometimes competed to be selected. In general, the audience and many participants were quite enthusiastic and verbal, contributing further to a festive atmosphere.

After 2 rounds, 10 competitors remained. A single integral was written on the board at the front of the auditorium, and the first 2 students to show correct evaluations to the judge were passed along to the 4th round. A second integral was then put on the board, and the first 3 students to evaluate this correctly also stayed alive. These five finalists then competed on one last integral. The first correct evaluation was achieved by Elena Parkhomenko, a sophomore, who thus became the Integration Champ and received $100 in book store certificates. The other four finalists (John Collinger, Mike Hamidi, Adrienne Sons, and Bob Winners) each received $25 certificates.