On Saturday, January 26th the University of Kentucky College of Engineering hosted a regional Future City competition. Future City, an outreach activity for middle school students conducted by the National Society of Professional Engineers, allows sixth, seventh and eighth graders to dream, design and build a city of the future. Students work with an educator as well as a mentor with an engineering background and use SimCity™ 4 Deluxe software to research and
write solutions to an engineering problem. Students from Kentucky, Tennessee and Northern Alabama attended the event.
Teams began the day by answering questions regarding their table-top scale city model and the competition culminated with each team delivering an eight minute presentation to a panel comprised of UK College of Engineering students and alumni.
UK College of Engineering faculty member Bruce Walcott, who led the hosting effort stated, “This is the 11th year that I have been involved in the competition and the eighth year that we have hosted it. Joe Percefull, who is the Director of the Future City Regional Competition, has done a fantastic job of getting the word out. He brings a lot of energy to the competition.”
Walcott added that winning teams from each regional competition will join 36 other regional winners at a national competition in Washington D.C. during Engineers Week. Second and third place teams are invited to exhibit their models during the UK College of Engineering’s Engineers Day open house on Saturday, February 23rd.
Walcott also noted that such an event would not have been possible without the many UK College of Engineering volunteers who gave their time before and during the competition.
“We rely heavily on the student section of the Kentucky Society of Professional Engineers to do the heavy lifting that is necessary to conduct this competition. Rachel Adams—a UK civil engineering senior—diligently recruited volunteer judges and graders for the software simulation part of the competition. Emily Dotson at the eStudio led the effort to grade the research essays and alumna Andrea Ramsey made a special trip back to the campus from Tennessee to judge the special awards. Also, because it is necessary to sequester teams so that they will not hear the judges’ questions ahead of time, the Kentucky Alpha chapter of Tau Beta Pi, represented by Adrianne Shearer and David Spencer, engaged the students in a ‘newspaper bridge building’ exercise in the spirit of the Future City theme. I’m extremely thankful for everyone’s hard work and enthusiasm for this unique event.”
A complete list of volunteers who helped to make this year’s competition possible:
Regional Director
Joe Perceful
Essay Graders
Emily Dotson
Brandon Wellman
Amber Troxell
Judges for Presentations
Kristin Cardin
Mike McHenry
Forrest Simmons
Stacey Schal
Joe Moore
Katherine Young
Billy Payne
Rachel Adams
Andrea Ramsey
Newspaper Bridge Building Volunteers
James Forshee
Adrianne Shearer
David Spencer
Sam Meffert
SimCity Software Simulation Graders
Cody Cousins
Admin Husic
Trae Thompson
Teng Wang
Konrad Kutter
Katherine Young
Food Arrangements
Vicki Cooper
Photographer
Katherine Walcott
More information about the Future City Competition can be found at http://futurecity.org