North Carolina Coordinator: Charlie Townsend, PE

Future City National Website

(2023-2024 Future City Competition - NC Regional Finalist – Orica from Morganton Day School in Morganton, NC)

Award-Winning Future City Competition

Announces North Carolina Regional Finalist: Orica from Morganton Day Middle School

31st Annual International Competition

Asks Middle School Students to design a 100% electric city one hundred years in the future

Raleigh, NC– Every day we plug in and power up, thanks to electricity. Electricity is essential for heating, cooling, and ventilation. There is a growing consensus that future cities could be powered completely by electricity.

This year's Future City® Competition challenges middle school students to explore: What clean, green, and renewable energy sources could power the electrical grid? How would these sources generate enough electricity for industry, transportation, agriculture, residential, and commercial uses? And to imagine what future cities will be like when engineers find and implement solutions to the challenge of electrifying our cities.

With a challenge to Electrify Your Future, 6^th, 7^th, and 8^th grade students will research, imagine, and design future cities that are fully electric and powered by energy sources designed to keep their citizens and the environment healthy and safe.
Working as a team with an educator and STEM mentor, students present their vision of the future through a 1,500-word city essay; a scale model of their city (built with recycled materials); a project plan to help keep their project on track; and in a short presentation to a panel of STEM professionals. Keeping the engineering design process and project management front and center, students are asked to address an authentic, real-world question: How can we make the world a better place?

Each year, over 60,000 students, representing 1,800 schools and 38 regions in the US, take part in the Future City® Competition. As a Future City region that encompasses the entire state of North Carolina, at this year’s competition in January, there were over 1000 students, teachers, parents, and engineering industry volunteers from across the state!   This marks the largest competition in the 20+ year history within NC. With invaluable legislative support, the NC Regional competition is an event to behold! Volunteers and donors from North Carolina’s most highly regarded industries provide professional expertise and sponsorship, without which the competition could not occur.

Congratulations to “Oriac” from Morganton Day School in Morganton, NC for winning this year's North Carolina Regional Competition!

North Carolina regional winners then face off at the Future City Finals, where they are joined by a growing roster of international teams, including those from Canada, Nigeria, and China. Taking place in Washington DC, February 18-24, 2024, during Engineers Week, the exciting competition culminates with one team taking home the grand prize of a trip to U.S. Space Camp and $7,500 for their school’s STEM program (provided by Finals sponsor Bentley Systems).

The NC Future City Region is in its 21st year promoting this authentic STEM-based experience for middle school students across the state. The Future City program is free for all NC schools - no registration fee is required - and has been since it was founded in 2001 by our steering committee of engineering professionals and educators.  The event is sponsored by professional organizations. Future City provides ongoing opportunities for engineering, technical professionals, and college students to volunteer in several different roles, including team mentors and regional coordinators.

"The Future Cities program is STEM education at its finest. This program helps students become aware of and focus on the sustainability of the Earth's limited resources. It helps students not only learn about the career of engineering but also focuses on developing several 21st-century college and career skills (planning, teamwork, organization, meeting deadlines) that are needed for success in the workplace,” says Mary Beth Liles, NBCT, NC Region Outreach Coordinator and past team coach.

Learn more at Future City | DiscoverE and visit our Facebook page for more information and updates on the Future City® Competition.  Keep up with the North Carolina local competition at futurecity.org/future-city-regions/north-carolina.

To learn more visit futurecity.org. Major funding for DiscoverE’s Future City Competition comes from the Bechtel Corporation, Bentley Systems Inc., PMIEF, and the Overdeck Family Foundation. Additional program support is provided by Linde Engineering, Pentair Foundation, and Shell Energy

About DiscoverE
DiscoverE is a nonprofit dedicated to providing global resources, programs, and connections between K-12 students and engineers and STEM professionals. We have a special focus on reaching girls and underrepresented and underserved students. DiscoverE is the backbone organization behind some of the earliest and most broadly adopted STEM and engineering programs available. They are free to all students, and it is our intent to remain no cost. DiscoverE is the backbone organization behind Engineers Week™ (established 1951), Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day™ (2001), World Engineering Day (2016, formerly known as Global Day of the Engineer), Chats with Change Makers (2020) and the Future City Competition™ (1993). For more information, visit www.discovere.org.

North Carolina Region Press Contact:
Dr. Lisa Thompson, Future City NC Region Steering Committee member
EmpirAlign Consulting, LLC
919-434-6444
[email protected]

Future City Competition – National Contact:
Thea Sahr
Deputy Executive Director
[email protected]
571-467-0356 

Future City Competition

The mission of the National Engineers Week Future City Competition is to provide a fun and exciting educational engineering program for seventh- and eighth-grade students that combines a stimulating engineering challenge with a "hands-on" application to present their vision of a city of the future. The competition is intended to: foster engineering skills such as teamwork, communication and problem solving; provide interaction among students, teachers, and engineer mentors; inform the community about the multi-disciplines within the engineering profession; and to inspire students to explore futuristic concepts and careers in engineering.

The National Engineers Week Future City Competition requires:

• Problem-solving
• Team work
• Research and presentation skills
• Practical math and science applications
• Computer skills

The competition employs a team-based approach. All members of the team have an important role that is necessary for the completion of the project.Participants complete five deliverables: a virtual city design (using SimCity); a 1,500-word city essay; a scale model built from recycled materials; a project plan, and a presentation to judges at Regional Competitions in January. Regional winners represent their region at the Finals in Washington, DC in February. 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.

Engineering and So Much More
This flexible, cross-curricular educational program gives students an opportunity to do the things that engineers do—identify problems; brainstorm ideas; design solutions; test, retest and build; and share their results. This process is called the engineering design process. With this at its center, Future City is an engaging way to build students’ 21st century skills. Students participating in Future City:

• Apply math and science concepts to real-world issues
• Develop writing, public speaking, problem solving, and time management skills
• Research and propose solutions to engineering challenges
• Discover different types of engineering and explore careers options
• Learn how their communities work and become better citizens
• Develop strong time management and project management skills 

Future City is one of the nation’s leading engineering education programs and has received national recognition and acclaim for its role in encouraging middle schoolers to develop their interest in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).

In 2017, Future City was recognized as the Most Innovative Hands-On Program by the US2020 STEM Mentoring Awards.

In 2016, the Future City Competition received the Henry C. Turner Prize for Innovation in Construction, presented by Turner Construction Company and the National Building Museum. 

In 2015, Future City was named the grand prize winner in the UL (Underwriters Laboratories Inc.) Innovative Education Award program and received a $100,000 award. The ULIEA program  highlights the essential, urgent and significant value of E-STEM education.