Students from Blendon, Heritage and Walnut Springs Middle Schools in Westerville represented Westerville City Schools in the Ohio Future City Competition held January 17 at Columbus State Community College. Heritage Middle School took fourth place at the 2014 contest.
Teams from 19 Ohio middle schools built 3-D models of the cities they created and wrote a narrative describing their city. Additionally, each student team wrote an essay on this year’s theme of feeding future cities. Engineers judged the teams on their oral presentation, computer design and map, model, essay and narrative.
Blendon Middle School team members were Abby Jung, Christina Himes, and Ellie Bouton from Patrick Schubert’s 8th grade science class. Their engineer mentor was Elysabeth Boran Bouton of Ohio Bioproducts Innovation Center at Ohio State. Blendon won second place for Most Environmentally Friendly City.
The Heritage presentation team included Kyra Welch, Noah Scholl and Brian Courts, who were led by Kristine Konik and Debbie Pellington and their engineer mentor Michael Brown of Hokuto USA. The team also consisted of several other Heritage 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students. Along with placing fourth in the state, Heritage won first place for Best Essay and Best Use of Ceramics and second place for People’s Choice, Best Land Surveying Practices, and Best Use of Transportation.
The Walnut Springs 8th grade team of Grace Sherman, Megan Zody, Ellis Blackstone, and Audrey Hollerich from John McCoy’s 8th grade science class, competed with support from their engineer mentor Mark Barrett. The program is supported by Westerville City Schools Science and Gifted Education Departments.
Now in its 23rd 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.