BSCES Public Awareness & Outreach Committee Events Roundup

The BSCES Public Awareness & Outreach Committee hosts a slew of exciting events throughout the year, exposing young minds to different STEM fields. Recently, the Committee held its annual Future City and Model Bridge Competitions and now we are starting up our next adventure – Future Careers. To get involved and to learn more, visit www.engineeryourfuture.org or contact me at reed.brockman@aecom.com.  

 

The following are a few highlights from our recent events.

 

For this year’s competition, middle school students were challenged with creating cities 150 years in the future that have clearly designed methods of assuring they are Zero Waste Communities. For a better understanding of the competition and to obtain resources, please visit www.engineeryourfuture.org. This year, the competition was held virtually using Microsoft Teams. Over 50 teams participated in the competition and in the end, 11 teams competed in the New England Regional Finals.

 

Congratulations to all teams that participated in the 2022 Future City Competition.  All teams did a truly wonderful job, and all were worthy of going on to the international finals. A special congratulations to team Venice of Goose & Hen Farm Homeschool Collaborative, winner of this year’s People Choice Award. Thank you to everyone who voted.  

 

Team Venice is representing New England at the International Finals, which will also be held virtually this year. We wish Team Venice the best of luck! 

 

Here are lists of special awards recipients, regional finalists, and prize winners during the announcements between finals presentations:

 

Every year we choose new materials from which teams are required to build their bridges. For this year’s competition, the materials were bamboo dowels, 36 inches long, and #4 test jute twine. To view a PDF of this year’s rules and specifications, click here.

 

18 teams participated in this year’s competition. The models were tested the last week of January by visiting each school/program and recording the loading sessions. One of the difficulties of this year’s materials was lashing the bamboo together. To help with this issue, my friend Dan Howard and I made a video to help students with this problem. If anyone wants to build a bamboo and twine structure, it’s a must watch video!

 

Congratulations to everybody who competed and volunteered in this Model Bridge Competition!  Everyone did a beautiful job.

 

Here are the results:

 

Trophies, certificates, and t-shirts will be sent to the teams soon. Also, some of the teams have even won monetary awards! In each category, each team member will get $100 for 1st, $75 for 2nd and $50 for 3rd places.

 

I look forward to seeing you next year, and for those that are seniors, you can always come back and help run the contest!  The test model this year was made by Ivan Kadurov, now an architecture student at Wentworth Institute of Technology, the host of our competition in “normal” years. 

 

Thank you to all our sponsors, and to our judges and longtime volunteers/coordinators: 

We have a new concept for a competition we are piloting this year called Future Careers, which will feature both a middle school and high school category. The competition is a spinoff of the Future City Competition and is presently underway.

 

For the competition, students are asked to create a video which is set in the previous year’s Future City Competition winning city. For this year’s competition, the setting is Luna City, which is nestled into a crater on the moon 150 years from now (2172).  Students need to make a video, maximum seven minutes long, that satisfies the following criteria:

Each category above is scored on a scale of 0 to 4.  A zero indicates the criteria has no mention.  A 4 does a stellar job, not only delving into the imagination but equally tying in concepts that while not maybe presently achievable with current technology, are convincing as potential future technologies. Equally, a “4” score would show a clear understanding of the nature of the work, whether that be by displaying understanding of the work as it exists today and indicating how the 150 years of time would alter that or describing the work from scratch.  Remember, this city is on the moon 150 years from now, and all the issues that arise from that setting need to be considered.

 

Aside from the above categories related to the materials, there are five other points that will be given for the quality of the presentation.  We leave the format wide open, as it can be a recorded zoom call, an animation, a PowerPoint presentation, or a live action film. Even that can be left to the imagination. In this, the imagination is everything. No points will be given for special effects or costly production. A “5 point” video will make complete sense, have a flow to it, be both informative and entertaining, and well rehearsed.

 

In the end, scores will be from 1-25.  There will be no Q&A sessions.  How we share videos and score a “winner” will depend on participation, but it will be virtual.

 

I want to dedicate the competition to Chris Evasius, a dear friend of ours who recently passed away. We are truly going to miss him.