September 07, 2005
WHAT TO DO WITH AN ABANDONED STRIP MALL?
SEVENTH- AND EIGHTH-GRADERS USE ENGINEERING
TO TACKLE THE CHALLENGE
As common as crabgrass but not nearly so easy to eradicate, small, abandoned strip malls are a vexing social problem for engineers and city planners across the country. For tens of thousands of middle school students, however, it’s just another challenge they have to conquer in the 2006 National Engineers Week Future City Competition™.
Sponsored by the nation’s professional engineering community, the competition asks students, working in teams and under the guidance of a teacher and a volunteer engineer mentor, to design and build a future city as a way to hone their math, science and engineering skills. The students must also research and write an essay dealing with a particular social dilemma.
Future City Competitions will be held in 37 regions in January. First place winners from each regional competition receive an all-expense-paid trip to the Future City National Finals in Washington, D.C., February 20-22, 2006 during National Engineers Week. Grand prize is a trip to U.S. Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama. More than 30,000 students from 1,000 middle schools are expected to participate in Future City this year.
Students first create their cities on computers using SimCity 3000 software (donated to each school by Electronic Arts), and then build three-dimensional scale models of the city, write the essay and an abstract. At the competition, students present and defend their designs before a panel of engineer judges.
Abandoned strip malls, usually treeless parking lots fronting a row of shuttered storefronts, are a nationwide problem. So how, exactly, does a child of 13 convert a five-acre rectangular lot, boasting an empty grocery store, restaurant and gas station, into a viable mixed-use development consisting of retail and residential complexes? It won’t be easy, admits Carol Rieg, Future City National Director, but, she says, that’s entirely the point.
“Future City purposely gives middle school students challenges big enough to cause even the experts to scratch their heads,” says Rieg, who has been with the competition since it began with a handful of middle schools in 1992 and has since become the largest engineering educational program in the country.
“It gets them to think about a problem many of them see every day on their way to school or home, but have never before even considered. And they identify the role of engineering in a context they can relate to.”
Future City also has benefits far beyond helping students understand the real world role of math and science, Rieg says, noting, “When young people start to closely examine the problems of their own neighborhoods with the intent to find solutions, it not only sharpens their skills as potential engineers, but as future citizens as well.”
The essay theme this year is "Create an Engineering Feasibility Plan for a specific
redevelopment area in your Future City.” As civil planners know, the rehabilitation and renewal of such an abandoned site is a complicated matter, involving several engineering considerations including water and sewer utilities, transportation access and soil analysis.
Solving the redevelopment puzzle and other complications of designing a city stokes student interest in engineering, a career that few may have considered prior to the competition. Teachers, engineers and parents who have worked with the program say the balance of fun and work successfully reaches young people with hands-on lessons in practical math and science that help maintain studies in subjects they will need to pursue engineering in college.
School registration deadline for the 2006 Future City Competition is October 15. Contact Future City National Director Carol Rieg at 1-877-636-9578 or crieg@futurecity.org, or visit www.futurecity.org and click on “School and Engineer-Mentor Registrations.”
The National Engineers Week Future City Competition is sponsored in part by the National Engineers Week Committee, a consortium of professional and technical societies and major U.S. corporations, co-chaired in 2006 by the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) and Northrop Grumman Corporation. The 2006 Future City essay is sponsored by the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying.
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IN BRIEF: The National Engineers Week Future City Competition™ each year invites middle school students nationwide to create cities of tomorrow. The competition encourages interest in math, science and engineering through hands-on applications. This year's challenge includes creating an engineering plan for redevelopment of an abandoned strip mall in the community. School registration deadline is October 15, 2005. Contact Future City National Director Carol Rieg at 1-877-636-9578 or crieg@futurecity.org, or visit www.futurecity.org and click on “School and Engineer-Mentor Registrations.”
