Jack Didesch, Euan Price and Evan Fouts, three 8th graders from Mossville School competed in the Future City Competition in Chicago on Jan 25nd, bringing home the “Integrated Highway Design Award”.
The Future City Competition is a national, project-based learning experience where students in 6th, 7th, and 8th grade imagine, design, and build cities of the future. Students work as a team with an educator and engineer mentor to plan cities using SimCity™ software; research and write solutions to an engineering problem; build tabletop scale models with recycled materials; and present their ideas before judges at Regional Competitions in January. Regional winners represent their region at the National Finals in Washington, DC in February.
The boys learned so much about engineering, city planning and working with scale as well as visiting the Sanitary District, Peoria Works and an architect in preparation” said their Educator Michelle Rouland. The team was also recognized by the Peoria County Board as a send off at their January meeting along with Michelle Rouland and their Engineer Mentor Amy McLaren.
“Several teams submitted to go in the past in our area and NONE had made it all the way through the process. Almost ALL teams were from Chicago private schools and had 15-30 kids in their Future City class as part of their curriculum”, Mrs.Rouland said.
After just short of 200 hrs of work off school time these 3 boys created:
A green SimCity with a population of over 60,000
A 1000 word Research Essay describing their futuristic city (300 yrs in the future), solving the transportation issue of congestion and safety with maglev-like roads designed with iron nitrogen (grown- creating additional industry) and charged with solar panels.
A 500 word Narrative describing how their futuristic city runs, handling issues like education, health care, police and fire coverage, industry, etc
A 1/40 scale model of a section of their city, with two moving parts that had to be mostly out of recycled materials and keep a budget under $100.
A Presentation 7 minutes long and answered TONS of questions from groups of engineers at the event.
We are so proud of all their work!!! On Jan 25nd they went up to Chicago. The boys brought home the INTEGRATED HIGHWAY DESIGN award from the Illinois Association of County Engineers!!