Future City Philadelphia |
The American Society of Highway Engineers, Southern New Jersey Section
participates annually in the Future City Philadelphia Competition judging the
Excellence in Highway Engineering Design Award
What is Future City?
|
HOW ASHE SNJ HELPS
The Future City Competition could not exist without the many sponsors that support them. Their sponsors include corporations, professional societies, and individuals. As with their volunteers, the one thing they all have in common is a desire to pass on their enthusiasm for STEM to the next generation. In addition to financial support, their sponsors are the main source of their volunteers. In some cases, volunteers have convinced their organizations to become sponsors, in other cases a sponsoring organization encourages its employees or members to become volunteers. Often both of those seem to happen simultaneously. See their sponsorship page for the benefits of becoming a sponsor of the Philadelphia Future City Competition.
A member of ASHE SNJ attends the Saturday competition event and presents a Special Award.
Future City- Philadelphia Overview
The mission of the DiscoverE Future City Competition is to provide a fun and exciting educational engineering program for middle school students that combines a stimulating engineering challenge with a "hands-on" application to present their vision of a city of the future.
The Philadelphia Regional Future City Competition is a 501.c.3 educational outreach program of DiscoverE. Whey are one of over 50 regional programs conducted throughout the United States and the world with the goal to introduce middle school students to the engineering profession. The Future City Program continues to be on the National Association of Secondary School Principals' National Advisory List of Student Contests and Activities.
The Philadelphia Regional Competition draws schools from Philadelphia and surrounding counties including the Lehigh Valley, Southern New Jersey and Delaware. Students from middle schools and after school programs in the region form teams consisting of 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students who work with a teacher and an engineer mentor from September to January.
The Future City Competition is a project-based learning activity that introduces students to the basics of both project management and the engineering design process. The students identify goals, build a plan, brainstorm ideas and design solutions. The students then enter a build ->evaluate -> build cycle. All this while assessing risk and meeting a schedule. Future City is a fun and engaging way to build students' 21st century skills.
- Apply math and science concepts to real-world issues
- Develop writing, public speaking, problem solving and time management skills
- Do hands on building of a model future city
- Research and purpose solutions to engineering challenges
- Discover different types of engineering and explore career options
- Learn how their community functions and become better citizens themselves
- Develop strong teamwork and project management skills
For more information, see https://www.futurecityphilly.org/
Competition
Students in the Greater Philadelphia Area work as a team from September to January with an educator and an engineer mentor to:
- Prepare a project plan
- Research and write solutions to an engineering problem
- Build a tabletop-scale model that must include at least one moving part and recycled material
- Present their ideas to working engineers at the Regional Competition in January