The Oakland Public Schools

Monica Chung, Emily Gore, and Matthew Whittle, eighth graders at Valley Middle School in Oakland, recently captured the New Jersey State Future City Championship at the 18th Annual National Engineers Week Future City Competition held at Rutgers University. This was the ninth consequtive year that Valley Middle School has advanced to the national competition. The students received a $750 technology grant, a camcorder, a team dinner, and the trip to the national finals.

The students will travel to Washington, DC, with their teacher, Judith Vihonski, and mentor/engineer, Robert Akovity, to present and defend their city to panels of engineers from February 13 - 17. More than 33,000 students from 1,100 schools in 40 regions are participating this year.

Their city, Waihona Meli, is located on the island of Lanai and features vertical farms, green energy production, rotating wind turbine hotels, and innovative infrastructure. The team spent countless hours researching, practicing their presentation, writing the narrative and essay, and creating a scaled model of their Hawaiian city.

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 sustainable, temporary housing for disaster victims, a narrative, a tabletop model, and a presentation.