Inspiring the Next Generation of Engineers through K-12 Events, Competitions, and More.

An all-girl team from St. Thomas More School in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, beat teams from 31 other regions to claim the top prize in the National Engineers Week Future City Competition™ national finals on February 23. Their domed city in the Gulf of Mexico called L’Etoile – French for star – is home to 300,000 people. In recognizing the team, Engineers Week Honorary Chairman Lord Browne of BP said, “All great engineering should be beautiful. If it’s not beautiful, it is probably not working as well as it should. This [model] is beautiful.”

Second place went to the team from Epiphany Catholic School in Miami, Florida,. Our Lady Help of Christians School in Abington, Pennsylvania, captured third place.

The Future City program engages 30,000 students in 1,100 public, private, parochial and home middle schools; 7,500 volunteers donate 225,000 hours. Student teams work with volunteer engineers beginning in September to design and build models of future urban centers. More than 30 special prizes were also awarded. Bentley Systems, Incorporated, helps to sponsor the national finals and provides the top prize, a team trip to U.S. Space Camp. Competition software is provided for all teams by Electronic Arts, Inc.

In Washington, D.C., more than 7,000 guests participated in ZOOM Into Engineering Family Day at the National Building Museum on February 19. Dozens of hands-on exhibitors, including IBM’s TryScience, worked with families, and cast members from the ZOOM television show worked with children.

Engineers Week Headquarters continues to support a variety of grassroots activities, especially for education outreach. Through informal DiscoverE programs, 45,000 engineers work with 5.5 million students and teachers in and out of the classroom. Reports of local events can be found in the EWeek newsletter archives.

Engineers Week Headquarters continues to refresh its popular Discover Engineering Online Internet site, the only one of its kind for middle school students.

Lights, Camera, Action for Visioneering 2005! From the live event to the TV show to the on-demand webcast, students and teachers explored “Entertainment of Tomorrow.” The Visioneering 2005 live event was held on Saturday, February 19, at Southern Methodist University, and the TV show was broadcast on Channel One nationwide on March 30. The show was awarded the ASEE Dean’s Council Award for Promoting Engineering Education. The SMU School of Engineering and the Institute for Engineering Education led the organization and execution of the event and show.

More than 600 students, 60 teachers, and 200 volunteers participated in the live Visioneering event making it the biggest ever. It included the Opening Rally; keynote speaker Brandon Oldenburg, founding member and Vice President for Reel FX; design project; Tech Expo; awards Ceremony; and concert by Jump 5.

The 2005 TV show was titled Mission Visioneer It and was a plot based show. A team of two Visioneers and their team leader learned of Static G’s plans to infiltrate the Visioneering event and pirate the students’ work. The team explored technology to help them thwart Static G’s plans. Visioneering 2005 received rave reviews with 99% of students wanting to tell their friends about Visioneering and 100% of teachers wanting to be invited in 2006. One hundred percent of team leaders and judges would recommend Visioneering to a colleague!

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