Special to Iredell Free News

A team of students from The Brawley School traveled to Washington, D.C., last week for the Future City finals competition.

More than 55,000 sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade students competed in their regional competitions earlier in the year, and each of the 37 U.S. regions and three regions in China sent their regional champions to Washington, D.C., to face off for the finals.

The Brawley School won Most Innovative Design of Infrastructure Systems, a special award sponsored by The American Society of Civil Engineers.

What is Future City? 

Student teams, along with an educator and volunteer STEM mentor, research and design a solution to a citywide issue that changes each year. This year’s theme—Climate Change—challenged students to choose a climate change impact and design one innovative and futuristic climate-change adaptation and one mitigation strategy to keep their residents healthy and safe.

Competing teams are judged by panels of volunteers from the STEM and design communities on five deliverables including:

♦ A Project Plan – where students complete a four-part plan to help them organize their project;

♦ A City Essay – in which teams have 1,500 words to describe their futuristic city and solutions to the Climate Change challenge;

♦ A City Model – with only a $100 budget, teams creatively repurpose recycled materials to build a scale model of their city;

♦ A City Presentation – where teams have up to seven minutes to present their city,

♦ A Q&A session – Teams have an eight-minute session with judges from the engineering, technical, and city design fields.

The Brawley School

Coach: Jay Hager
Team members: Brooke Klauka, Callista Medlen, Sahithi Sharma, Mya Alford, Phoebe Bisheit, Owen Chvatal, Ava Compton, Liv Harding, Advika Jalagam, Sona Karthikeyan, Toby Medlen, Owen Miller, Marissa Muller, Prat Praveen, Hansika Ram, Sandrea Richards, Jiya Sankar, Pooja Suresh and Anvi Yavanamanda
Principal: Rachael Moyer

Photos