Welcome to Future City, a national competition you'll find as fulfilling as it is fun for your students. Now in its 18th year, the National Engineers Week Future City Competition is a program developed for seventh and eighth grade students to help them discover and foster interests in math, science and engineering. As you'll soon discover, it's a program that's both challenging and stimulating for everyone involved.
You'll find three useful tools to help you prepare for this competition. Your handbook is the most comprehensive source for rules, instructions, general information and useful preparation tips and techniques. This website is also a good source for timely updates about the competition, and contains information not found in the handbook. For instance, it features instructions for using the SIMCITY 4 Deluxe software, and a section that allows you to print all the necessary forms for entering the competition. There's also a CD-ROM which provides video overviews of the competition's categories. (If you don't have it already, contact your Regional Coordinator for a copy.)
What is the Future City?
The National Engineers Week Future® City Competition (www.futurecity.org) is an example of problem based learning with computer simulation. It is an integrated, multidisciplinary, holistic approach to relevant issues and is a strong example of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, & Mathematics) education that addresses national and state academic content standards. The program asks 7th and 8th grade students from around the nation to team with engineer-volunteer mentors to create — first on computer and then in large, three-dimensional models — their visions of the city of tomorrow. To truly affect the ways students and general public perceive engineering it is important for engineers to use the right messages. Too often engineers focus their messages to young students on the process of becoming an engineer and overlook messages on the value of an engineering career. The National Engineers Week Foundation has been engaged with two projects specifically to research and develop messages around messages to convey that engineering is a helping profession. These messages also convey the value of teamwork and creativity. Learn more from ‘Engineer Your Life’ and ‘Changing the Conversation’ at www.eweek.org
