BY STACIE LETT CAIN
To the list of normal middle school activities, a group of students at The Brawley School have gone beyond academics, sports and hanging out with friends and added winning a regional title in the Future City engineering competition.
The team, comprised of 15 students, created a model of a city named Pulau Karang, which means Coral Island. This year’s challenge was to build a floating city and provide innovative examples of how their design works and keeps its citizens healthy and safe. The students have devoted a total of more than combined 2,000 hours to the project by staying after school two days a week and coming to school on Saturdays.
“I heard about it and the description of what it was and it was intriguing to me so I decided to do it,” said 14-year-old Toby Medlen. “I love to build things so it seemed like it would be cool.”
Medlen, an eighth-grader, along with his sister, Callista Medlen, also an eighth-grader, are both two-time Future City state champions.
After winning this year’s regional competition, the team has set its eyes on winning a national title.
“This is very much a competition team,” said the team leader, Jay Hager, who had competed in Future City at other schools where has taught and brought the program to Brawley three years ago.
After this year’s regional win against 32 teams at N.C. State University on January 25, this will the Brawley team’s second time competing in Washington, D.C., for the national title.
“I think this is one of the more meaningful things I do as a teacher,” Hager said.
At regionals, the team received $1,500 for winning the competition as well as $1,250 for Most Creative Presentation. And though the funds are helpful, it takes a village to make sure that the entire team gets to participate at the state and national level.
“We are very lucky to have sponsors to help make this happen,” said Emily Pratt, mother of seventh-grade team member Asher Pratt. “Darden Engineering is a valued sponsor from here in Mooresville that helps us to give this experience to the kids.”
Future City, a competition that uses Engineering Design Process (EDP) and project management skills to allow students to showcase their solutions to a citywide sustainability, provides participants with would be like to choose engineering as a profession.
For Callista Medlen, participating in Future City led to a new career goal.
“I wanted to be an astronaut,” she said. “But I learned how awesome and competitive engineering can be, and how engineering can change people’s lives. I decided that is what I wanted to.”
The Brawley team’s model represents an unconventional approach to the problem. It had to be approved because it veered off of what most teams chose to do. Rather than using a two-level model showing levels of city infrastructure, Pulau Karang comes with a base level and a level showing a birds-eye view, as well as pull-outs showing the sublevel infrastructure.
“We chose this model because it allowed us to show more detail and tell more of the story we wanted to tell,” Callista Medlen explained. “We, as a team, thought that was important.”
Another remarkable feature of the model is that had to be created on a $100 budget. That includes the model and any presentation visual aids as well as costumes used for the presentation.
“It forced the team to be very financially conscious,” said Stephanie Hawkins, mother of seventh-grade team member Ben Hawkins. “We are very proud of the hard work they have done on this project.”
The team will depart for Washington, D.C., on February 15 for the Future City national competition.
They will be competing against 44 teams for $7,500 and the opportunity to attend space camp. At the competition, Brawley’s presenters will be Callista Medlin, Raghav Garg and Nathan Kock.
2025 Future City Team Members
♦ Callista Medlen
♦ Raghav Garg
♦ Nathan Koch
♦ Ishita Agarwal
♦ Liv Harding
♦ Toby Medlen
♦ Owen Miller
♦ Harshith Dadi
♦ Levi Koch
♦ Desmond Onyskin
♦ Colin Barrett
♦ Ben Hawkins
♦ Aaryan Mansukhani
♦ Asher Pratt
♦ Aryan Sharma
Photos
