Walnut Springs Eighth Graders Learn from Local Engineers

1/11/2013

If you were to create a futuristic city, what would it look like? How would issues of clean air and water, food production, commerce, transportation, governance, and health care be addressed? These are the questions students are tackling as they work on the Future City program in John McCoy’s 8th grade advanced science classes at Walnut Springs Middle School. Pupils begin with SimCity software to plan and develop their cities, then use research and technical writing skills to write an essay on runoff before building their futuristic cities to scale out of recycled materials.

To help students understand how create thriving cities as well as what role engineers play in solving these issues, Walnut Springs welcomed engineers Jamie Decker and Mike Flickinger from the engineering firm CH2M HILL (www.ch2m.com) on January 7.

The presentation related the students’ city creation and writing tasks to current engineering projects in and beyond Central Ohio. Pupils asked detailed questions specific to their futuristic cities, especially about this year’s project focus of runoff. The guests explained that runoff is one of the top three issues in their field and had much insight to share on this topic. Students also discovered the vital role of engineering both locally and globally, aspects of that career, college information, resources, and how they can plan now for a rewarding career in math and science.