2018 China Future City Finals presenters Ethan Dodson, Reagan Rutkowski, Prisca Yim (alternate) and Sloan Kerska in Beijing. 2019-2021 presenter Emerson Kerska is shown on the right.
An Out-of-this-World Experience! BY LINDA J. GERHARDT
T
he Future City Competition challenges middle school students to apply the engineering design process to brainstorm solutions to an annual problem while imagining, designing, and building cities of the future. Program deliverables include a project plan, a research essay, a scale model made from recycled materials, a presentation highlighting the solution, and Q&A sessions with panels of judges. This year’s challenge was as unique as this entire year has been: to build a city on the Moon that uses two lunar resources that help keep residents healthy and safe. For the past 13 years, it has been a privilege to share some of what I have learned throughout my education and career as an engineer, first as mentor
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and then as an educator, with the many St. John Lutheran School in Rochester students who have participated in the Future City program. Over the years, our team has been honored with numerous regional titles and special awards, multiple top 5 at nationals finishes, two national titles, and an invitation to participate at the China Future City Finals in Beijing. Despite our many experiences throughout the years, completing project deliverables and preparing to compete during a pandemic year was difficult. Although our school held in person classes, we did not have an academic enrichment class during the school day. In addition, after school meetings were hit or miss, since mandates changed over the course of the project. To build our model, construction started in one team member’s
garage, continued in our classroom, and was completed in another team member’s garage. Essay development and presentation practices also took place when and where possible. For this reason, our team’s motto for this year was ‘be flexible.’ Our team of 8 for the 2020-21 competition year included presenters Emerson Kerska, Brendan Koss, and Hannah Bernthal, alternate and moving part presenter Grant Hiler, and team members Caleb Raikes, Amber Koss, Noah Toth, and Johnny Hering. Our faculty sponsor is St. John Lutheran 8th grade teacher Tim Grothaus, and our mentor is General Motors engineer Tim Koss. To capture the experiences of the presentation team members during this challenging year, I posed some questions to them.
