Rosemount Area Middle Schools Fare Well In Future City Competition

A team of students from Scott Highlands Middle School finished runner-up and won a special award at the Future City Minnesota regional competition Jan. 21 at Dunwoody College of Technology in Minneapolis. Four other District 196 middle school teams also won special awards at this year's competition, which marks the 25th anniversary of Future City.

This year's theme was The Power of Public Space.

Sponsored by the National Engineers Week Foundation, Future City is a national, project-based learning experience where middle school students imagine, design and build cities of the future. Students work as a team with a teacher and engineer mentor to plan cities using SimCity software; research and write solutions to an engineering problem; build tabletop scale models with recycled materials, and present their ideas before judges at a regional competition.

Regional winners represent their region at the national finals held in Washington, D.C. each February, according to a news release.

The Aquaeta team from Valley Middle School of STEM finished in fifth place overall and earned the Student Choice Award, given to the team selected by students at the regional finals. Members of the team are Marissa Loppnow, Cassandra Loppnow, Morgan Gallagher, Martin Brean and Kyle Olson. Teacher Sheri Gedlinske is the team advisor and mentors are engineers Brandon Anderson of the city of Apple Valley and Krista Anderson of WSB.

The Techtopia team from Rosemount Middle School won the Best Land Surveying Practices Award, which recognizes the design that employs the best land surveying practices, taking into consideration the high standards used by surveyors to help protect the public's safety and welfare. Members of the team are Ryan Leska, Olivia Dalton, Summer Jensen and Jacob Zabel. Teachers Andrew Preston and Alyssa Simmers are advisors and mentors are engineers Steve VanderWiel of IBM and Will Grunewald.

Image via YouTube