Four teams from Mr. Mike Exner's 8th Grade Physical Science class recently participated in The Future City Competition at Southern Polytechnic State University.  The Future City Competition is a national program to promote technological literacy and engineering to middle school students, providing them with a fun and educational engineering challenge to present their own vision of a city of the future.  This was the first time Heritage has ever participated in this competition.

The contest consisted of five graded components:
SimCity Computer Design - Students used SimCity software to design a city 150 years in the future with a population of 50,000.  The city had to include residential, commercial, and industrial areas, power plants, roads, and power distribution networks.  The students were required to consider energy efficiency, pollution levels, traffic density, taxes, and budgets.

Research Essay - Teams researched and wrote an essay on providing a reliable and effective health care product to improve the quality of life and comfort for a patient who is either a senior citizen, or has a specific disease, or is suffering from an illness, injury, or physical disability.

City Narrative - Students wrote a narrative describing their Future City's key features and design attributes. 

Scale Model - Teams had to build a three-dimensional creative representation, containing moving parts, of their Future City.  (These are available for viewing in the library.)

Oral Presentation - Teams were required to explain the unique design features and key elements of their city before a panel of judges.

Our Heritage teams represented the School extremely well.  Seventy teams from 24 middle schools from all over the state were at the competition. Each team had to go before two different panels of judges.  The top five teams were set aside for one final round on stage in front of all the students and staff.  

We had a team to make that final five! 

Tripp Brown, Chris Johnson, and Matthew Davenport comprised the team Avenir du Monde. They did a wonderful job on the stage, with the final judging placing our team at fourth place.   

Additionally, every student was given a ballot at the beginning of the competition to choose one model from the entire group for The People's Choice Award. This is a very special, coveted award.  The Heritage team, Urba Maxima, took that award with team members Seraphina Lee, Jiyun Choi, Thomas Gruber, and Ethan Mansour receiving thunderous applause. 

There were thirteen other special awards given at the competition, and Heritage took two of them. Best City Design was awarded to our team Makasa Valley, consisting of team members Sara Brillanti, Katie Griffin, and Marianna Spragins. (Their city model is pictured above.)  Best Residential Zone was awarded to Brilyante. Team members included Clara Haugen, Natalie Bunch, and Emma Rose Frederking.

Many thanks to Stephen Lee, our Engineer mentor, who came to the school numerous times to help with design decisions on the models. Mr. Lee is married to faculty member, Sherrill Lee  

Every one of our four teams won something, which is really unheard of for first time school participants.  Heritage is incredibly proud of these talented eight graders.  Congratulations!