Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Lionville’s Whiz Kids
Middle school students snag 3rd place at engineering competition
Lionville Middle School students created a city of the future — Kopiena — and placed third in an engineering competition that attracted more than 40,000 students.
Lionville Middle School, in the Downingtown Area School District, created a city called Kopiena, which means community in Vietnamese. Lionville teacher Guy Raines said it fit this year’s theme of community and working together.
Lionville students Neehar Kolli, Riya Mitra and Paige Williams teamed up with Raines and volunteer mentor Dan Koval to represent the Philadelphia region. Although 24 students helped with the city, only three can present the city to judges at this level. Lionville has competed in the national competition for three out of the four years they participated in the local level.
Raines said that the students bonded during the times they worked hard on the project after school, and they even sat with the team during lunch
at school.
“They came together as a class,” Raines said.
The students based their city on “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” the TV show featuring Phillly native Will Smith that aired in the 1990s. The students researched the show and watched YouTube clips because they are too young to remember it. They incorporated themes and quotes into their presentation, which Raines said the judges noted was creative.
Regional Finals were held across the country in January. This year’s theme, “The Power of Public Space,” encouraged students to design innovative, multiuse public spaces for the community.
Raines said the students researched Philadelphia and thought about what to do with the city’s abandoned spaces. They made their city with clean water in the Schuylkill River to allow people to swim, fish and boat. They also designed facilities for rock climbing and sky diving.
The Future City Finals, which concluded Wednesday at the Capital Hilton in Washington, D.C., was one of the events taking place during Engineers Week.
Future city Sociecity – engineered by West Ridge Middle School students in Austin, Texas, placed first on Wednesday at the 2017 Future City Competition. It was the 25th anniversary of the international program.
Since last fall, more than 40,000 middle school students from 1,350 schools in 37 US regions, as well as teams from Canada, China, and the Middle East, have been designing and building the cities of the future, according to event organizers.
Second place went to Veritas Homeschoolers from Phoenix, Arizona, for their Future City, ReviviQuito. They received a $5,000 scholarship for its STEM program, sponsored by the National Society of Professional Engineers.
Lionville Middle School received a $2,000 scholarship for its STEM program, sponsored by IEEE-USA.
Honorable mention for fourth place went to students from Warwick Middle School in Lititz, Pa., for their city Pompeii. Fifth place was awarded to Southwest Middle School students from Lawrence, Kansas, for their city Teratai. Each receives $750 for their organization’s STEM programs, sponsored by Ohio University and National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying.
Event organizers said the Future City Competition asks sixth through eighth grade students to address a real-world question: How can we make the world a better place?
During the Future City competition, students work design a virtual city using SimCity software. They research a city-wide issue and write an essay describing their findings and innovative solutions. Teams complete a project plan to help keep their project on track. They also build a tabletop scale model of their city using recycled materials and create a short presentation about their city.
Raines said that the students worked on their skills including engineering, public speaking, writing and computer skills.
“Everyone was able to do their own part and then bring it together as one project,” Raines said.
One of the nation’s leading engineering education programs, Future City encourages middle schoolers to develop their interest in STEM - science, technology, engineering and math.
Raines said that several students this year had siblings who participated in past years, and he noticed that the students became motivated to work harder to achieve their ranking.
For information about Future City, visit www.futurecity.org.