Oakland Students Win New Jersey Regional Competition

Cameron Anderson, Kevin Cheetham, and Melissa Clauss, eighth graders at Valley Middle School in Oakland, recently captured the New Jersey State Future City Championship at the 16th Annual National Engineers Week Future City Competition held at Rutgers University. This was the seventh year that Valley Middle School has advanced to the national competition.

The students will travel to Washington, DC, with their teacher, Judith Vihonski, and mentor/engineer, Michael McNally, to present and defend their city to panels of engineers from February 16 - 21. More than 30,000 students from 1,111 schools – a record number of registered schools – in 40 regions are participating this year.

Sponsored in part by the National Engineers Week Foundation, a coalition of more than 75 engineering, professional, and technical societies and some 50 corporations and government agencies, Future City is the largest and most successful education program of its kind. Regional winning teams receive an all-expense-paid trip to the Future City National Finals, hosted by Bentley Systems, Incorporated, in Washington, D.C. during Engineers Week. National grand prize is a trip to U.S. Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama. Their entry consisted of a Sim City computer model, an essay on nanotechnology and the structural health of systems, an abstract, a table top model, and a presentation.

Their city, Nuova Venezia, is Venice in the year 2150. The city features a a redeveloped section of the city called Alta Terra. Their city, constructed of recycled materials – from computer parts to toothpaste boxes – has running water in the Grand Canal, a moving tidal protection system, and a space elevator that rises from the city. The students recreated S. Mark’s Square, St. Mark’s Cathedral, and the Campanile, Venetian landmarks.

The team spent 500 hours researching, practicing their presentation, writing the abstract and essay, and creating a scaled model of “new” Venice. The students consulted with engineers and experts in nanotechnology to create their entry.