Hundreds of middle school students and educators from across Northeast Indiana fought the snow and gathered at Purdue University-Fort Wayne for the 19th annual Future City competition over the weekend.
“Future City” is a national competition intended to demonstrate to young students why engineering and technology are important to ensuring a habitable world.
Last year, dozens of teams representing schools across the region were tasked with designing a power grid that could withstand and recover from a natural disaster. Blackhawk Middle School finished in first place with a city based on the side of a mountain in Japan, to help mitigate the seismic impact of natural disasters like earthquakes and tsunamis.
This time, teams were challenged to choose a threat to their city’s water and design a system to “maintain a reliable and clean supply.” 40 volunteers from the community and university served as judges, in addition to a handful of national surrogates.
Carol Dostal is the outreach director of PFW’s College of Engineering, Technology, and Computer Science, and helps lead PFW’s efforts to host the event. She says the growth is tangible among schools and students that return from year-to-year.
“As they continue in the program, they are able to bring their students to a realization of what these careers are all about, what city planning is all about, possibly pursuing a STEM career and how that relates and the actual design process,” Dostal said.
Jayden Manz, a student from Lane Middle School, has participated in the regional Future City for the last three years. Admitting he was nervous the first year, Manz worked his way up to being one of Lane’s three presenters this year.
“Over the past several years I’ve really learned a lot, I’ve gotten comfortable talking in front of people and I really enjoy the engineering and craftsmanship and stuff,” said Manz.
Manz walked me through his team’s display: a model of Nyuairando, an island south of Japan in the South China Sea, while focusing on hydroelectricity and how its water system works.
“The top part is actually our residential zone, the middle part is the commercial zone, and the bottom is our industrial zone, which is near the ocean,” he explained. “That way, it’s easier to fly in-and-out and we don’t have a lot of skyline to deal with.”
Hydroelectricity and the water supply are located at the bottom. But what’s the benefit?
“Since it is from the ocean, we do have a constant supply, and we don’t have to worry as much about large trees that do come from the river,” he said.
There is one problem relying on ocean water, but Lane students had a political solution for that.
“We do have to worry about salt, but that does create a large industry that could import and export salt,” Manz said.
Lane wasn’t able to take home first prize, but they did finish in the top five, alongside Blackhawk, Jefferson, and Kekionga middle schools.
Norwell Middle School in Ossian ended up taking first place, and will get the chance to participate in the national competition in mid-February.
