Sun staff
Eighth graders involved in the Future City competition at Batavia Local School District earned the highest honors at state this year with their future city model “Avantieme” and will soon compete at national finals.
For the competition, students in Mary Bradburn’s gifted language arts class created a futuristic city by incorporating engineering, scientific research, technology and creativity into a tabletop scale model city that they presented to judges.
“It’s really a fun project,” Bradburn said. “It is really geared toward getting kids more interested in engineering.”
Bradburn said all of the students in her class worked together together using their different strengths to complete the project.
Students helped research and write about the city, build the model and create an engaging presentation about the city.
“It brought us together,” Jessica Jansen, a student who worked on the project, said. “We all got to put in ideas, and we watched it come to life.”
Laney Poling, also a student who worked on the project, said there were really no limits to what they could come up with as long as they could support their ideas with research and facts.
Laura Michalske, an engineer with Proctor and Gamble Company, helped students with their city this year.
This year the model involved an island that included underwater and land features with a variety of futuristic energy sources, transportation methods and more.
The city included an underwater hotel, a special transportation system known as the Hare, innovative ocean current energy production used to power the city, a place to harvest honey from bees, and more.
Students presented their city at the state competition Jan. 18 at Columbus State Community College.
When their name was announced as the overall winner, students said they were shocked and excited.
“I jumped out of my shoes,” Ashley Mathews said.
In addition to placing first overall, Batavia’s city also earned awards for best infrastructure, most environmentally friendly, best use of transportation, and the people’s choice award.
Next, the team from Batavia will head to Washington D.C., to participate in the national finals Feb. 15-19.
Students who participated in the project include William Banish, Diana Brooks, Jacob Daulton, Nicholas DeFrank, Dominic DeRose, Dylan Ellington, Zach Filla, Destiny Graves, Makenzie Hahn, Catherine Hatfield, Jared Herron, Cooper Jackson, Jessica Jansen, Kiana Jones, Austin Maham, Natalie Martinez, Ashley Mathews, Margaret Mehlman, Maggie Menke, Brett Moles, Laney Poling, Derek Rubenacker, William Scaggs, Victoria Smith, Allyson Swartz, Danelle Tucker, Jasmine Wendel and Isaac Wiederhold.
Students said they are excited to participate in the national finals.
“What I like is making it to finals you get to see how other states compete,” William Banish said.
For more information about the Future City competition, visit www.futurecity.org/ohio.