Three PUSD Schools Excel in Future City Competition

PEORIA, Ariz.–. Frontier, Marshall Ranch and Paseo Verde elementary students participated in the tenth annual National Engineer’s Future City Competition at the Phoenix Preparatory Academy and brought home three society awards.

PUSD students won the Best Overall Infrastructure Award presented by the American Society of Civil Engineers; the Best Team Presentation award; and Best City - Environmental Engineering Design award. The Peoria Unified School District schools competed against 60 other teams from across Arizona.

The inaugural team from Frontier – eighth-graders Haley Kent, April Hanks and Courtney Kealer, under teacher sponsor Melissa Sherwood and engineer mentor Gary Faul – were the winners of the Best Overall Infrastructure Award. Eighth-graders Macy McGrew, Lily Ng and R. J. Lyrenmann with teacher sponsor Brian Little from Marshall Ranch Elementary won the Best Team Presentation award. The Paseo Verde Elementary team of eighth-graders William Denison, Nathaniel Drake, Ali Tafreshi and Brandon Aycock, with teacher sponsor Sherri Gillett and engineering mentor Paul Drake, won the Environmental Engineering Design award. Each team member received a $25 gift check from American Express for their efforts.

The competition involves the creation of a computerized city of the future using the program Sim City 3000, writing an abstract describing the city and preparing a scale model of a portion of the city they created on the computer. The teams also had to write an essay on developing an energy strategy to include fuel cell systems to power a city of the future. The computer creation was evaluated on city layout, energy efficiency and livability. The model was judged on creativity, attractiveness, a moving component and recycled material usage.

The Future City Competition is a national program sponsored by engineers to promote technological literacy and engineering in middle school students. The program fosters an interest in math, science and engineering through hands-on, real world applications.