Kelly & Close’s own Kyle Fink served as a Engineer Mentor in the Engineering Competition “Future City”
Future City is a project based learning program where 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students imagine, research, design, and build cities of the future that showcase their solution to a citywide sustainability issue. Past topics include stormwater management, urban agriculture, public spaces, and green energy. The 2017-2018 theme is The Age-Friendly City. Teams identified an age-related challenges that exists in today’s urban environments and engineer innovative solutions that allow their future city’s senior citizens to be as active and independent as they want to be.
Kyle acted as a mentor to students of Sacred Heart School, located in Havertown, Pennsylvania, to guide them through the Engineering Design Process. Participants completed five deliverables: a virtual city design (using SimCity); a 1,500-word city essay; a scale model; a project plan, and a presentation to judges at Regional Competitions in January. The team from Sacred Heart created Zukunft, a German city formed on the principles of science over 1000 years in the future. The city focused on sustainability and community to promote independence for residents of all ages. The students took home a Special Award for Innovative Environmental Management for their unique approach to elemental recycling of all waste. After completing Future City, student participants are not only prepared to be citizens of today’s complex and technical world, but also poised to become the drivers of tomorrow.
Photos below:
