Ossian’s Norwell Middle School took home first prize in the 2020 Future City competition, defeating more than 45,000 middle school students from 1,500 schools across the United States, as well as parts of Canada and China.
Each year, schools create fictional cities -- sometimes from the ground up, or inspired by real locations -- in an effort to show students how STEM principles can improve the world. These creations include building the virtual city on SimCity software, writing essays explaining the process and eventually constructing a scale model for display.
This year’s theme focused on clean water sustainability.
Norwell’s city -- called Yemoja -- won the regional Future City contest at Purdue Fort Wayne in January, advancing to the final in Washington, D.C. After 19 years of Hoosier schools participating, this is the first time any Indiana school has placed in the top five, let alone winning the competition.
The students involved in creating Yemoja have been awarded with a trip to U.S. Space Camp, also taking home $7,500 for Norwell’s STEM program. Schools from Lawrence, Kansas and Mooresville, North Carolina rounded out the top three.
