AIM to STEM the TIDE!

ESD Future City gets record participation from Detroit

Posted on 11/5/2007 3:08:25 PM A record 30 schools from the city of Detroit have joined the 2008 Engineering Society of Detroit Michigan Regional Future City Competition. This is the most participants from Detroit since ESD began sponsoring the competition 13 years ago. This brings the number of Future City schools to 65 with a total of almost 2,000 students vying for the number one spot and the opportunity to participate in the national competition. “This is by far going to be our best Future City competition yet,” said Ron Smith, director of education for ESD. “We are very excited and encouraged by the record turnout from the Detroit schools and hope that this competition will open new possibilities for students. We are also grateful to all our donors for allowing us the opportunity to involve more schools in Michigan.” Funding for Future City was made possible by generous donations from The Skillman Foundation, Ford Motor Co. and the DTE Energy Foundation. The Future City Competition challenges seventh and eighth grade students to design a city of the future - and have fun doing it. This program was designed to promote technological literacy and engineering and to foster an interest in math, science and engineering through hands-on, real world applications. Teams and teachers have already begun working on their computer simulations using the SimCity software program and writing their essays and abstracts for the competition. This year’s essay topic is “Keeping Our Future City’s Infrastructure Healthy: Using Nanotechnology to Monitor City Structures and Systems.” The Michigan Regional Future City Competition is part of a national program sponsored by the National Engineers Week Committee. ESD coordinates all aspects of the Michigan competition, which is open to 7th and 8th grade students in all public, private and parochial middle and junior high schools in the state. The competition is team-based, each team consisting of at least three students, a teacher and an engineer-mentor. A team can include a whole class or as few as three students. The competition will take place on Tuesday, Jan. 22 at the Rock Financial Showplace in Novi. For more information about Future City, visit www.esd.org or contact Della Cassia at (248) 353-0735, ext. 4112 or e-mail dcassia@esd.org.