Bechtel Sponsored DiscoverE Future City Team Visits White House, Appears on FabLabTV
Who knew that joining a Future City team could land you a visit to the White House? That’s exactly what happened to the Nevada Future City team this year. Future City is a middle school competition that ask students to imagine, design and build cities of the future. After four months of designing a virtual city (using SimCity), they write up their solution to a city-wide issue, build scale models of their city, and then present their vision to a panel of judges. Luckily a team from Nevada was chosen to participate in the U.S. Science Fair Engineering Festival which was hosted by U.S. President Barack Obama, April 16-17, 2016.
In 2016, more than 40,000 students and 1,350 schools participated from 37 U.S. regions and two regions in China. It’s also interesting that 46 percent of Future City participants are girls.
Check out this video to see the Nevada team’s visit to the White House as part of the U.S. Science Fair Engineering Festival. The video was produced by FabLab TV, which is taking a new approach to science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education. FabLab, a mix of entertainment and education, is focused on showcasing groundbreaking STEM stories and using digital and social elements to attract youth.
As community stewards, Bechtel has been partnering with DiscoverE (formerly Engineers Week Foundation) since 1990. Future City is one of DiscoverE’s STEM focused programs. Over the years Bechtel has provided funding and Bechtel leaders to serve as judges for the Future City Competition Finals in Washington, DC.
Future City is a shining example of what happens when we unleash the next generation to figure out how to address current environmental and sustainability concerns. “It’s great to see students so enthusiastic about engineering, math, design and even script writing,” said Leslie Collins, Director of DiscoverE. “The skills they are learning as part of Future City will be beneficial to the students for years to come.”
