South Miami Middle first in future city competition

BY BETTY NUÑEZ

Florida Power & Light Company announced the winner of Florida's National Engineers' Week Future City Competition held at the Miami-Dade Fair/Expo grounds. The winners, Daniele Turken, James O'Donnell, Chad Kishick and Jason Edelstein, of South Miami Middle School received a $1,000 check for their school from FPL. The team also won an all-expense paid trip to the national competition in Washington D.C., courtesy of National Engineers' Week.

South Miami Middle School's team accepts the first place award as executives from FPL and the National Engineers' Week Future City Competition look on. The team members won a $1,000 check for their school and an all-expense paid trip to the national competition.

The South Miami Middle School champs will represent South Florida as they compete against the winners of 18 other regional teams in the national finals on Feb. 22-23. More than 18,000 seventh and eighth grade students from19 regions throughout the U.S. participated in this year's competition. The national champions will win one week at U.S. Space Camp.

"The Future City Competition offers a valuable tool for educators to use in the classroom," said Candria Eddinger, eighth grade science teacher at South Miami Middle. "Our students jumped right in and were intrigued and excited to learn and apply science and engineering principles.
"We're very excited and look forward to representing our region in the national competition later this month," Eddinger added.

With the help of FPL engineers and other community volunteers as mentors, student teams from 19 Florida schools used their science skills to design and build future cities. The students were required to build a future city model displaying residential, commercial and industrial areas, power plants, methods of transportation, and power lines. Students also had

to address issues such as pollution levels, traffic density, taxes and budgets in an essay and verbal presentation.

"The competition encourages middle school students to take an interest in science, math and technology subjects so that they may take an interest in engineering and civic planning," said Ed Nuñez, FPL plant manager at Turkey Point and one of the judges at the regional competition. Teams were evaluated on how well they worked together to explain the design, function and model components of their futuristic city.

"Our students didn't know a lot about what it takes to build and manage a city, but they came together and worked very well with each other," said Jill Bartley, a science teacher at Epiphany Catholic School, which placed second in the South Florida competition. "If I could teach science like this all the time, I would."

Epiphany Catholic School received a $750 check for placing second, and St. Michael Lutheran School came in third, for which it received $500.

Additional winners included: Middle School of the Arts for Most Futuristic City; Sarasota Arts & Sciences for Most Creative Moving Part; Wellington Christian for Most Creative Use of Materials, and West Miami Middle School received the Student's Choice Award. Students who placed in the top five teams each received awards ranging from $25 to $100.

The Future City Competition is a nonprofit educational program, which introduces thousands of American middle school students to the role of engineering in society. Florida Power & Light sponsored the Florida event this year as part of its 75th anniversary celebration. The competition is sponsored nationally by National Engineers' Week.