Blendon and Heritage Middle Schools in Westerville took fourth and sixth place respectively at the 2014 National Engineers Week Future City Competition – Ohio Region, held January 18 at Columbus State Community College. An essay submitted by the Walnut Springs Middle School team placed 7th and also won an iPod for the school.
Teams from 18 Ohio middle schools built 3-D models of the cities they created and wrote abstract descriptions. Additionally, each student team wrote an essay about this year’s theme of transportation. Engineers judged the teams on their oral presentation of the city, computer design and map, model, essay and abstract.
The Blendon team included Abby Jung, Christina Himes, and Ellie Bouton from Patrick Schubert’s 7th grade science class. Their engineer mentor was Dustin Homan of Ohio Bioproducts Innovation Center at Ohio State. Blendon also won honorable mentions for “Best Architectural Model” and “Best Use of Recycled Materials.”
The Heritage presentation team included George-Sedgewic Anand Patil, Noah Scholl and Kyra Welch who were lead by Kristine Konik and their engineer mentor Michael Brown of Hokuto USA. Heritage won first place for “Best Essay” and honorable mentions for “Best Use of Ceramics” and “People’s Choice.”
The Walnut Springs 8th grade team of Philip Elliott, Trent McFarland, and Noah Voorchies from John McCoy’s science class competed with support from their math teacher and engineer mentor Ned Kerstetter and Robert Kennedy, retired engineer from Lucent Technologies.
Now in its 22nd year, Future City encourages interest in engineering by providing hands-on applications for math and science, and lays the foundation for developing workplace skills such as vision and imagination, troubleshooting, teamwork and cooperation. Volunteer mentors offer what is often a student's first glimpse into the world of engineering, a step in encouraging a career in the field.
The Future City Competition is sponsored by National Engineers Week, founded in 1951 to increase public awareness and appreciation of the engineering profession and technology. For more information, please visit www.futurecity.org and www.eweek.org.