For the second straight year, Michigan’s Future City team from St. John Lutheran School in Rochester has won the National Future City Competition.
The students – Leah Schroeder, Emily Abramczyk and Abby Dayton – teamed up with their teacher, Jon Pfund, and volunteer mentor, Linda Gerhardt, PhD, Global Lead Paint Quality for General Motors.
Teams from 37 middle schools and organizations from across the country participated in the finals, which took place as part of Engineers Week, February 14-18, 2015. Since last fall, 40,000 middle school students from 1,350 schools have been engaged in the 2014-15 Future City Competition.
The judging was held Monday and Tuesday in Washington, D.C. The team also won three special awards after four hours of judging Monday – best essay, best use of renewable energy, and best virtual city design.
St. John Lutheran School takes home the grand prize of a trip to U.S. Space Camp and $7,500 for its school’s STEM program.
The team won The Engineering Society of Detroit (ESD) Michigan Regional Future City Competition January 26, in a daylong event held at the Suburban Collection Showplace in Novi.
A city of the future – Lekol-la-fre – engineered by students from St. John Lutheran School in Rochester – is presented to judges at the 2015 Future City Competition.
Future City gives sixth, seventh and eighth graders the rare opportunity to engage in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) activities – and then apply those activities to real-world problems. Students imagine, design and build a city set 150 years in the future that’s organized around a central theme. This year’s challenge: Feeding Future Cities.
ESD organizes the Michigan regional competition, recruiting more than 200 engineering and technical professionals to serve as team mentors and judges.
To learn more about the ESD Michigan Regional Future City Competition, click here, or contact Allison Marrs at amarrs@esd.org or 248-353-0735, ext. 121.
About Sarah Hovis