Wisconsin Middle Schoolers Design a 100% Electrically Powered City to Compete in the Annual Future City Competition; Top 2 Teams Advance to Finals in Washington, DC

Milwaukee, WI – Each year, middle school students are presented with a challenge to help make the world a better place. This year, our Middle School teams Electrifyied Their Future and researched ways for their Future Cities to adopt green, clean, and renewable forms of energy.

The Future City Competition is a project-based learning experience where students in 6th, 7th, and 8th grade imagine, research, design, and build cities of the future. 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?

Working in a team with an educator and STEM mentor, students are challenged to design a city 100 years into the future. They research today’s public spaces and write a city essay about their solutions and city design. Students then bring their ideas to life by building a tabletop scale model of their city using recycled materials on a budget of $100.

This year, 55 teams competed at the Wisconsin Regional 2023-24 Future City Competition hosted by STEM Forward on January 20, 2024. We are pleased to announce the five finalist teams:

• First Place: Team Nova Potentia, Glen Hills Middle School from Glendale
• Second Place: Team Nouveau Mindanao, Waukesha STEM from Waukesha
• Third Place: Team Maro Loko, Peace Lutheran School from Sun Prairie
• Fourth Place: Team Valen, Whitman Middle School from Wauwatosa
• Fifth Place: Team Renaitre, Longfellow Middle School from Wauwatosa

Congratulations to the five finalists and 23 special award winners! Volunteer judges were amazed at the talent of these energetic students as they presented their ideas on how to power a city with energy generated from green, clean, and renewable energy sources that keep their citizens and the environment healthy and safe.

The top two teams, Nova Potentia from Glen Hills Middle School and Nouveau Mindanao from Waukesha STEM Academy will travel to the 2024 Future City Finals Competition held in Washington, DC, from February 17-20, 2024, to represent Wisconsin. More than 60,000 students from thirty-seven regions in the United States compete annually, and three from China participate in the Future City Competition Finals. We wish the Wisconsin Teams good luck and hope they will bring home a win!

“STEM Forward is excited to offer the Future City Competition for the past 30 years to ignite STEM passion in middle school kids. This program provides project management, engineering, and presentation skills focusing on environmental responsibility. This year’s competitors show a bright future in our future STEM leaders!” commented Theresa Wolf, Future City Program Manager at STEM Forward.

We could not have done it without the help of the over 200 STEM professional volunteers and 40 Milwaukee School of Engineering student volunteers! For more information about Future City and volunteer opportunities, visit www.futurecity.org. Want to talk about creating a Future City team at your school? Reach out to Theresa Wolf at twolf@stmforward.org and visit our website at www.stemforward.org/future-city-competition.

About STEM Forward

STEM Forward is a 501(c)(3) non-profit and metro Milwaukee’s leading K-12 STEM education and outreach provider. STEM Forward’s programs, events, and activities inspire local youth to pursue STEM careers and provide a talent pipeline to businesses in southeastern Wisconsin.

NOTE: This press release was submitted to Urban Milwaukee and was not written by an Urban Milwaukee writer. While it is believed to be reliable, Urban Milwaukee does not guarantee its accuracy or completeness.