Eastern Iowa middle schoolers look to future in annual competition

CEDAR RAPIDS - Iowa middle school students gathered Saturday in Cedar Rapids to talk about how innovation can help cities thrive.

Prairie Point Middle School was Innovation Central for the 25th annual Future City competition in which 51 teams of sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders compete through their research and designs for cities of the future.

A record number of teams in the regional competition addressed the theme, 'The Power of Public Spaces.”

Kristine Sorensen, co-coordinator of Future City Iowa, said about 18 Iowa schools were represented. More than half of the students were girls, she said.

Each group had to present its idea through a virtual city design, a project plan, a 1,500-word essay, a scale model of the city and a presentation.

Saturday's event packed the middle school's north gym for the judging of presentations and handmade scale models. Sorenson said students' virtual models and essays already had been scored.

'It's exciting, the ideas they're coming up with now,” said Les Kapler, a Cedar Rapids resident and judge for the event. 'Future City contestants did not think of these things 10 years ago. They're really innovative.”

The winner was a team from Franklin Middle School, which consisted of eighth-graders Hugh Duffy, Kira Debrower, Zelda Siegel and Josh Horne. They had been working on their city - Cascadia - since October and have earned spot next monthy in the Future City national finals in Washington, D.C.

'We learned so much from this experience,” Debrower said.

Most students participating had been working on their projects for months.

'Some of these kiddos have been working since the first day of school in August,” Sorenson said. 'It's just an enormous amount of work, and it's just really impressive.”

Ethan Gailushas, a seventh-grader at McKinley Middle School, presenting his team's city, which was called Katawo. He said the project was 'tough and stressful at times” but worth the effort.

For Madeline Fitzgerald, an eighth-grader at Harding Middle School, the project provided an introduction to engineering.

'I didn't know it entailed so many aspects,” she said. 'I'm definitely more interested (in engineering) than I was before.”

Some students said their learning went beyond engineering.

'I learned how to be eco-friendly. I didn't think about that lot before this competition,” said Emma Weilbrenner, an eighth-grader from Evans Middle School in Ottumwa.

She and her two teammates - Meghan Coulter and Maxwell Thomason, both eighth-graders - presented their city, Utilis Tractis, which in Latin means 'space efficiency.”

The program aims to teach students about engineering by applying math and science concepts to real-world issues, researching solutions to engineering challenges and developing time management and project management skills, according to the Future City website.

'It's an experience that really counts,” said Padmaja Rao, a Marion resident who coached two teams for this year's competition. 'It's valuable, the multiple skills they can learn.”

Saturday's winner has received an all-expense paid trip for the national competition Feb. 18-22.

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