Students Imagine Tomorrow And Ask "Why Not?" As They Create Designs For The 2001 National Engineers Week Future City Competition

Engineers know that designing and building cities that work are among the most daunting of human challenges. Between now and next February, however, it will be seventh- and eighth-graders across the country who will take up that challenge in the 2001 National Engineers Week Future City Competition™. 

Although students who've participated in the non-profit competition, now in its ninth year, consistently cite it as one of the most entertaining projects they've ever worked on, the program's goals are definitely serious. By teaching young people the real-life rigors of building and operating a city, the competition's organizers say, they also learn important lessons in math, science, engineering, design, civics, and teamwork. 

To get things rolling, Future City regional coordinators recently gathered to launch the 2001 competition at a training session at the Hyatt Regency Woodfield in Shaumburg, Illinois, from June 22-24. 

In the competition, the students design a city of the future using SimCity 2000, donated to their schools by Maxis, a software company based in Walnut Creek, California. Then they take a section of the design and recreate it in a three-dimensional model made mostly of recycled materials. In order to ensure a more even playing field for school districts of various wealth, models may not exceed $100 in cost. Students must defend their future city at the competition before a panel of engineers, and must also write an essay on an engineering topic.  

Students work in teams of three along with their teacher and a volunteer engineer mentor from the community. Many people associate the concept of a "future" city with science fiction utopias (and much of what the students come up with is certainly fantastic), but most of the students' time is spent trying to solve the dilemmas that bedevil engineers and civic planners today, namely traffic, pollution and the environment, employment, education, and crime. Students begin work at the start of the school year, exploring a wide variety of scenarios such as where and how to implement factories, parks, transportation systems, housing, schools, and other components of the urban fabric.

Schools compete in regional finals in January. Each regional winning team receives a free trip to Washington for the national competition to be held February 20 and 21 during National Engineers Week, February 18-24, 2001.

Besides group sessions where coordinators discussed fundraising, securing schools, recruiting engineer mentors and judges, and other competition details, the coordinators heard from  representatives from Motorola, headquartered in Schaumburg, who discussed the company's diversity recruiting programs. In that spirit of diversity, Future City national coordinator Carol Rieg notes, about one-third of the regional coordinators are women and five of the 26 coordinators are African-Americans, who can serve as strong role models for girls and minority students. 

Workshop attendees also participated in a strategic planning session aimed at continuing the expansion of the competition to include more regions nationwide. The National Engineers Week Future City Competition began with five sites in 1993. In 1999-2000, 19 regions -- with more than 800 schools and 18,000 students -- participated. In the 2000-2001 school year, 26 sites are scheduled to host the competition: Buffalo, Chicago, South Florida, Hampton Roads, Virginia, Houston, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, New York City, Omaha, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Washington, D.C., the states of Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Washington, and the new sites of Dallas, Denver, Huntsville, Alabama, Las Vegas, Minneapolis/St. Paul, and San Francisco. Sponsored by the National Engineers Week Committee, a consortium of engineering associations and major U.S. industries, co-chairs of National Engineers Week 2001 are the National Society of Professional Engineers and IBM.

The 2000 national competition, held at the Hyatt Regency Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. on February 22-23, was won by Nipher Middle School in Kirkwood, Missouri, representing the St. Louis competition. Second place went to Central School in Glencoe, Illinois winner of the Chicago competition, and third place to St. Paul Lutheran School in Grafton, Wisconsin, from the Milwaukee competition. 

Schools wishing to sign up for the Future City Competition and engineers interested in volunteering as mentors or judges should contact Carol Rieg at (301) 977-6582, by e-mail at cardress@aol.com, or visit http://www.futurecity.org.