Eweek2020: Future City
As part of Engineers Week 2020, PEA Group wants to shine the spotlight on the Future City competition – a compeition our project manager, Rebecca Bentley has experienced first hand. Rebecca has been participating as a judge for the virtual cities, essay, and competition day presentations for the Future City Competition for the past seven years. She began judging after a call for volunteers through the Engineering Society of Detroit, who hosts the annual competition for junior high students throughout the state. Rebecca began remotely judging city essays seven years ago and then added virtual city judging. In the last two years, she has judged all three phases of the competition.
To learn more about the Future City competition, visit futurecity.org. Interested in becoming a judge? Check out this page: futurecity.org/participants/judges
“The Future City competition teaches kids more than engineering science and math concepts. The focus on hands-on learning with real-world applications helps develop a variety of skill sets, including creativity and innovation that will be required to address challenges in all of our futures.”
Rebecca joined PEA Group in 2018 as a Project Manager, bringing more than 20 years of geotechnical and construction materials testing experience. Her expertise includes geotechnical investigations and all areas of construction materials testing, including the placement of controlled fills, concrete testing, masonry testing, asphalt testing, aggregate testing, soils, and bedrock.
About Future City:
Future City is a cross-curricular educational program where students in 6th, 7th and 8th grades imagine, design, and build cities of the future. Over four months, students work as a team with an educator and volunteer mentor to design a virtual city using SimCity software; research and write an essay addressing this year’s theme; build a model of their city using recycled materials; complete a project plan, and present their city before a panel of judges at a Regional Competition in January. This year’s theme is Clean Water: Tap Into Tomorrow. Teams are to choose a threat to their city’s water supply and design a resilient system to maintain a reliable supply of clean water. Regional winners go on to represent their region at the national competition in Washington, DC, in February.