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Awards/Contests
    - 2007 Future City Competition


January 27 at UW Milwaukee

The future of engineering looks bright judging by the 2007 Future City Competition that took place on January 27, at UW Milwaukee. Thirty-one teams of 7th and 8th graders showcased their innovative ideas at the event. Each team generated a computerized design of a city, wrote an essay, built a model of a city, and gave a formal presentation for judges. The team winning overall honors received a trip to Washington, D.C. for the National Competition; however awards were also given in specific areas such as the best use of plastics. Walt Grannen and Vic Baez represented the Milwaukee SPE as judges at the event.

Walt Grannen was a Special Awards judge and determined which team had the best use of plastics in design of the futuristic city. Walt viewed the models and talked with teams about their use of plastics, the properties of plastics, and environmental topics before selecting the winner of the Roger Tamsen Memorial Award of $250 (to be used to enhance learning at the winning team’s school). St. Joseph, Waukesha, was the clear winner with a city titled LaLa Paloosa. The winning design used plastics in a multitude of ways and had a clear recycling plan. In addition, the team members from St. Joseph talked confidently about the positive contribution plastics would make in the city.

Vic Baez served as a Preliminary Round judge, for the second year, in the model and presentation portion of the competition. In this round of competition teams were asked to explain their models and intelligently present their ideas to a panel of judges. They were then asked questions by the panel of judges. Interestingly, in addition to winning the Roger Tamsen Memorial Award, St. Joseph, Waukesha also took second place in the overall competition. Way to go future engineers! Congratulations to all participating teams for their dedication and hard work. For additional information on Future City Competitions please visit their website at: www.futurecity.org

2007
Future City
Competition

2005 Winning
Essay

2005 Essay
Winners